The Young Scorpions of the Gambia will return home today (Wednesday) following their 2-0 defeat of Sierra Leone in the first leg of the preliminary stages of the African Youth Championship at the weekend.
The U-20 team secured the convincing win at the Wassum Stadium in Makeni with second half goals from Bun Sanneh and Abdoulie Jallow. The second leg will be played at Bakau’s Independence Stadium on 23rd April, with the winner facing Morocco in the second round of the qualifiers.
The win is a welcome boost for Gambian football, coming less than a week after the senior Scorpions were held to a goalless stalemate at home by Mauritania in the 2017 African Cup of Nations qualifiers.
“This squad can take on virtually any of their counterpart teams in the world. They are brilliant,” BBC’s Umaru Fofana, who watched the game, wrote on social media, Facebook, after the match.
The Young Scorpions qualified in the championship on two occasions in 2007 and 2011. In its maiden appearance in 2007, a team made up of mainly the 2005 African U-17 Championship winners won Bronze in Congo Brazzaville and qualified to the World Cup in Canada later that year having won all three group stage games. At the World Championship, they were knocked out by Austria in the second round, but despite the defeat, it was the first time that The Gambia had ever participated in the knockout stages of a world championship.
After missing out to Ghana, with the Black Satellites going on to win the World Cup, in the final round of the qualifiers in 2009, The Gambia, guided by Lamin Sarr, now deceased, qualified again for the African U-20 Championship in South Africa. This time though, the Young Scorpions failed to negotiate pass the group stages and were thus knocked out of the competition.
With goals scored away going a long way in deciding the outcome of a home and away series, the Young Scorpions are a foot and a half in the second round, though the technicians would predictably warn against complacency in the second leg. But for the Sierra Leoneans to qualify to the next stage, they would have to score three times in Banjul and hope that the hosts do not score more than one goal.
by Baboucarr Camara &
Alieu Ceesay
