Gambia fined US$500 for withdrawal from U17 Championship

The chairman of the GFA Normalisation Committee has confirmed that The Gambia has been fined US$500 by CAF for withdrawing its U-17 male football team from the qualifying round of the African U-17 championship.

The Gambia U-17 were to meet in their first fixture with one of Africa’s most successful country in the youth category Ghana as far as football is concern. The withdrawal of the darling Scorpions (The Gambia U-17) means their opponent Ghana will have automatic qualification to the next stage of the CAF 2012 qualifying campaign.

Alhaji O.B Conateh was speaking to this reporter Sunday in an interview at the Independence Stadium at the end of the FA Cup final between Gamtel and Interior that ended 3-0 in favour of Gamtel. “We have withdrawn the U-17 and we have been fined US$500. We are trying to get the right U-17,” OB Conateh said, adding that they are cash strapped, and so cannot finance the participation of the U-17 in the championship considering the fact that the U-17 female team are to participate in the World Cup, while the U-20 are set the qualifiers.

  

Also speaking to this reporter at the stadium, the Youth and Sports Minister, Alieu K. Jammeh, said: “What we have been seeing over the years is people above U-17 playing for U-17 category and we don’t want to continue on that trend.” He further stated that what they need is to go back and organise football at the grassroots to identify young talents who are real U-17.

While promising that The Gambia will make a 'come-back' Minister Jammeh stressed that they have to put their house in order. He said the Normalisation Committee is working hard on that. “Gambia has been participating long time just for the sake of participating and we now want to graduate from that. We need to have a purpose for taking part in competitions,” he added.

It  could be recalled that the GFA Normalization Committee sometime early this month reacted to allegations that The Gambia U-17 has withdraw from taking part in this year’s championship because of lack of fund to sponsor the team.

It is sad news to every football enthusiast in the county that the two time African champions of the U-17 trophy in 2005 and 2007 played in Banjul and Algeria respectively fail to produce a team that will represent the nation in the championship. However this has started showing the signs that the country’s football is currently dying in the youth level special at the U-17.

This is a stage where every most successful country in the world today such as Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Holland, France to mentioned but a few all concentrated on building a proper national teams from the grass root level which start at U-17 and actively taking part in any competition, but the case is different in The Gambia were national teams are only form or regrouped for a selections of a final team to represent the nation in a period maximum of two week before the competition.

It is high time for Gambia through the Ministry of Youth and sports and The Gambia Football Association to come up with strategic plans that can graduate our country from this so call way of handling our football if we real want to excel in football.