A bright playing career took Omar Sise to Turkey with Besiktas, Dinamo Zagreb in Croatia as well as clubs in Switzerland and Slovenia but it was cut short at the age of 27 after a spate of injuries.
Follwing retirement, Sise took solace in coaching and having coached his own youth team in The Gambia, he pursued a B License in the profession and graduated with honours after a tedious programme with the United States Soccer Federation. But having worked as a youth team coach in the United States and the Technical Director of Rush Soccer Africa, a US based soccer franchise, Sise left his comfort zone in the Bangladeshi premier league, where he was voted Best Coach of the Year 2014, and despite the huge financial benefits to accept the challenge of The Gambia U-20 coach, something he frequently describes as his contribution to nation building.
Since guiding the Gambia U-20 Team to the finals of the WAFU Football Club in Senegal last year, which they refused to play because of the organisers’ decision to change the rules towards the end of regulation time, the Young Scorpions are on a four-game unbeaten run in international matches. They began their preparations for a place in the 2017 African Youth Championship with a 2-0 away defeat of Sierra Leone in Makeni two weeks ago aided by second half goals from Captain Ablie Jallow and Bun Sanneh.
This weekend, Omar Sise will make his debut as the U-20 Coach when the team hosts the Shooting Stars in the second and deciding leg of the preliminary qualifiers for the right to play Morocco in the next stage of the qualifiers. The last that Sierra Leone played in Banjul in this category, they were crushed 4-1 by Gambia in the 2011 qualifiers.
“I have never gone into a football match, either as a coach or player, with another intension different from winning and that is not going to start now,” the ever-confident Omar Sise told Observer Sports in an interview on Friday following his side’s 1-0 friendly win over Steve Biko at the Independence Stadium in Bakau.
“We are progressing very well and confident but we cannot be complacent so we are treating this game with the same level of seriousness as the one in Makeni and besides we want to win in front of our own fans. So we will keep working hard; the most important thing that matters is the three points and not the amount of goals we score.”
In Friday’s test game, the team played very well but was profligate in front of goal, hitting the post and the bar on a combined six occasions but as Sise attributed the wastefulness to fatigue for overworking the players as a result of club and national team commitments, he was equally confident that another cancer, lack of goals, that continually haunts Gambian football would slowly, but surely come to pass.
“Scoring goals is an old Gambian problem and we cannot change that overnight but we will get there. That is why we are playing test games and we will keep pushing hard to improve on our goals ratio.”
The match will be played on Saturday 23rd April at the Independence Stadium with kick off set for 4:30pm. Tickets are set at D100, 50 and D25.
Aurthor: Baboucarr Camara
