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Guinea Hammer Gambia in friendly

Feb 11, 2011, 1:57 PM | Article By: Lamin Drammeh

The Gambia senior national team succumbed to a disappointing 3-1 defeat to Guinea Bissau in a friendly game played in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday.

The test match was part of both sides' preparations for the forthcoming Africa Nations Cup qualifiers in few months' time.

The Scorpions, who failed to complete the 18-man squad, travelled to Portugal with only 11 players leaving the head coach Paul Put with no option in terms of substitutions.

Ousman Jallow, Momodou Ceesay and Abdourahman Dampha had clear goal-scoring opportunities to bury the game in the 10th, 20th and 25th minutes respectively but they were denied by an outstanding Guinea Bissau gloves man Nene, who made strings of world class saves to prevent the struggling Scorpions from scoring many goals.

Despite finding themselves 1-nil up through Zilina's creative front man Momodou Ceesay in the 29th minute when he converted from a penalty spot, the Gambian team could not manage to keep hold onto their early first half lead.

As a result, Guinea Bissau came up with an equaliser courtesy of Moria's 75th minute strike when he capitalised on a defensive error to nod home his side's opener.

The Gambia was reduced to ten men when defender Abdou Jammeh was controversially sent off after protesting against central referee's decision of allowing Guinea's opener much to the disappointment of the Belgian tactician Paul Put in an action-packed second period.

The Gambia could have again found themselves in front in the second period after numerous clear-scoring opportunities but their efforts were not good enough to earn them a happy afternoon.

In the process, Guinea hammered home two further second half goals to put the game beyond the reach of the desperate Gambian team, whose performance in international football has been less than satisfactory