Twenty-four players of the Gambia national U17 team will go to camp today at the Manjai Lodge and Resort as they prepare to come face to face with the Junior Lions of Senegal in a friendly international match to be played at the Independence Stadium on Sunday, according to the Baby Scorpions head coach Lamin Sambou.
"The team, as I am speaking to you, will go to camp at the Manjai Lodge and Resort in preparation for the friendly on Sunday and the boys are fully prepared to put up a good taste," said the man at the helm of affairs, Lamin Sambou, who assisted former coach Tarik Siagy when the U17 beat Algeria 3-1 in Algiers to lift their second continental youth championship at the expense of the host in 2009.
Lamin Sambou, who is currently in charge of the two times African U17 champions on temporal basis following the departure of former coach Tarik L. Siagy, told this reporter that he is aware of the importance of Sunday’s friendly given the fact that it is part of their effort to put in place a formidable team that will travel to Tunisia for the first leg of the final rounds of the U17 qualifiers at the weekend of 5th 6th and 7th November 2010.
"We have a total of 28 players in the team currently but we decided to drop four players from the full squad for Senegal friendly, such as Sulayman Marr, Buba Jammeh, Saikou Sidibeh and Seedy Bojang," said coach Sambou, fondly called LS.
LS, who appealed to the entire nation to come out in large numbers to support the boys on Sunday, said it would have been better for the U17 team to play the friendly away considering the fact that their next encounter in the qualifying campaign is an away match, but further revealed that the Senegalese team insisted to travel to Banjul for the same reason.
Both teams are using the friendly to better prepare themselves ahead of their final qualifying matches in the African U17 qualifying campaign en route to Rwanda in 2011.
The Gambia will rub shoulders with Tunisia in their home ground in the first week of November while their neighbours and friends Senegal will take a long journey to Accra, Ghana, where they will face an uphill task of achieving a win over the formidable Black Starlets of Ghana in what could be a crucial first leg of the final rounds of the qualifiers.
Meanwhile, impeccable sources close to this paper have disclosed to Pointsport that tickets for Sunday’s friendly match will be sold at D25.00 for uncovered pavilion, D50.00 for covered and D300.00 for VIP.
