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The national Under-20 side, Shooting Stars, were last Saturday humiliated by their Gambian counterparts at the Bakau Stadium. They went down by 4 goals to 1 after taken a surprise first half advantage. The defeat means that our boys have another 90 minutes fight to overturn that defeat if they are to progress to the next round of the competition.
However, there is more to the story than the embarrassing defeat. We learnt that one of the factors responsible for the defeat was disunity among the officials. The Acting Secretary General of the Football Association, Abdul Rahman Swarray, we understand had a tough moment with Team Manager (Coordinator) James Fofana and Head Coach, Alimamy K-Foot Turay, over the selection of players and their travelling allowances. In fact, the unfortunate incident and other related factors were responsible for the team’s belated arrival in Banjul. Reliable sources intimated this press that during the team’s provincial tour, the FA made a provision of Le 150,000 for each player but the figures were reportedly slashed down by 80 percent which alerted and annoyed some members of the executive. Being very suspicious of an existing plan of having players travelling allowances reduced from U$500 to U$300, the Acting Secretary General who never had plans to travel to make the trip later changed his mind and formed part of the 28 -man delegation of ten officials to travel with the team. The sudden development saw players travelling without leaving anything for their families. Abdul Rahman Swarray by extension turned to a Finance Officer by preparing a voucher for the players and saved them from another possible slash of the monies. The Exclusive further learnt that another further confrontation occurred among officials after the defeat and it took the President of the Association, Nahim Khadi, sometime to calm them down. Contrary to what many journalists have been saying about government’s insensitivity to the growth of sports, the away match costs government the sum of seventy-three millions(Le 73m) and another eighty million Leones is also ready to be spent on the home match in 8 days’ time. Spokesman of SLFA, Sorie Ibrahim Sesay when contacted on the issue, was in doubt. According to him, he could not say anything when the team was still in The Gambia. We hope to continue with our investigations. |
