The Scorpions reached the quarterfinals of the tournament before eventually losing to the host nation, Cameroon by 2 - 0 last year.
Even though the team has managed to secure qualification for its second appearance at the biggest African football showpiece, its latest results have been somewhat disappointing.
The Gambia played home matches in Tanzania for the World Cup 2026 qualifiers on 16 November against Burundi which The Gambia lost 3-2. On 20th November, The Gambia again lost 2-0 to Cote d' Ivoire.
The Gambia needs good preparation for the AFCON 2023 which will be played from 13th January to 11 February 2024. The Gambia will play against Senegal, Guinea Conakry and Cameroon. Government and the business community should put enough financial resources for the preparation and participation of the team.
The Gambia's first two opening matches of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers is raising questions as to what is/are the reason(s) for the team’s poor performance and results.
People have always criticized coach Tom Saintfiet’s tactics and suggested the need for him to play more attacking football.
However, the unsatisfactory result could be the result of various factors, one of which is the lack of friendly matches for the team. Another could be the country’s inability to host its home games at the Independence Stadium. Lack of confidence, commitment, motivation and other factors could all be contributing elements to the team’s undesired results.
Therefore, it is high time that the Gambia Football Federation steps up, looks into the matter and tries to address it to ensure the team brings back smiles on faces of Gambians.
Work at the Independence Stadium also needs to be fast tracked by the Ministry of Youth and Sports but in doing so; it needs to ensure the work is done according to CAF standards to avoid the stadium being rated unfit to host matches again.
Mr President, as the chief patron of football in the country, we hope you will personally contribute in whatever way that you can to bring back the positive results that made the whole football world talk about the Scorpions and The Gambia.
Football requires a lot of investment and without it, it might be difficult to compete against the best and produce positive results.
We hope that those responsible for the country’s football particularly the senior national team will address whatever is behind our latest poor run of form leading to poor results to ensure The Gambia qualifies for its first ever World Cup in 2026 as well as go further than its 2021 African Cup of Nations quarter-finals position.
It should be noted that Coach Tom Saintfiet was appointed 18 July 2018 and during his tenure, Gambia has qualified twice for AfCON
Mr President, another area that requires your attention is agriculture, which is our main foreign exchange earner. For any country to be fully independent, it must be able to produce enough food for its citizens. Agriculture is described as the backbone of the country but the country literally imports everything including rice which is the country's most consumed food.
During one of your meetings in the ‘Meet the People’s Tour, you announced that the government will be buying groundnuts from farmers at a price of D38,000 per tonne this year. This shows an increase of 6% compared to the previous year which was D32, 000 per tonne.
Mr President your government should be commended to get better price of groundnut within the neighbouring countries. Senegal on Friday announced price of the tonne of groundnut as D29,120 effective November 30th.
The government should diversify the production of other crops such as groundnut, millet, maize but most importantly rice which is consumed by almost every Gambian daily.
Agriculture is the leading foreign exchange earner and can minimise our foreign exchange expenditures as well as create employment for a lot of young people in the country.
Our farmers should be encouraged; get assisted with equipment, tools and fertilizer that would soften land, make labour less stressful, which could then be sold at reasonable prices.
The cooperation with the People’s Republic of China should be sought in training farmers for lucrative rice cultivation.
More campaigns should be made for people to be engaged in agriculture.
Good Day!
