Following Caf’s banning of the Independence Stadium, The Gambia Football Federation has chosen Morocco as the venue for its home leg of the Afcon 2023 preliminary qualifying tie against Chad on March 29.
The Gambia will play Chad in two legs with the winner progressing to the group stages of the qualifiers for the right to play in the Afcon finals in Ivory Coast in January 2023.
With both Chad and The Gambia banned to host matches of this magnitude, both legs of this tie would have to be played away from the two countries. Chad has chosen Cameroon for its home leg while The Gambia picked Morocco. This means The Gambia national team will fly to Cameroon for first leg and proceed straight to Morocco for the return leg only days after.
Justifying the choice of Morocco over of Senegal as most Gambians suggested, an official of the GFF said Morocco will be a lot cheaper because accommodation feeding and transport logistics are free, thanks to a strong cooperation and relationship between The Gambia and Morocco.
Asked about the possibility of getting fans to Dakar than in Casablanca, the GFF official said while the fans are very important sometimes the players cannot handle pressure from the fans. “What is important is we have to cross this preliminaries at all cost and what you don’t want is too much pressure on the boys. Remember it will be catastrophic if we should lose this preliminaries to Chad. The fans would have a field day when we reach the group stages with six homes matches guaranteed,” he said.
