The Gambia

Away 2007; Saller

OK, at this point I have probably exhausted my “wow, I got this a great price” posts, but as I have been sticking to a fairly limited budget, I get some pleasure out of these bargains.  I happened upon this by chance, a few minutes before a listing ended on German Ebay.  Stuck a bid in, expecting the usual late flood of bids to drive the price up by tens of euro.  But it never came.  So for the less than €20 (incl delivery), I had this very rare shirt secured. This particular shirt was worn by the men's team at the 2007 u20 World Cup in Canada.

 

They say what is rare is beautiful, but it is hard to say this Scorpions shirt is particularly beautiful.  It is a standard template from Saller of its time (this particular template seems to have been wore by quite a number of smaller countries around this time), and only the logo and crest add any flashes of colour.  Sometimes I like plain shirts, but this should be tied to simple cuts and fit.  Here, the shirt is quite baggy (even allowing for its XL size) with a lot of panels and piping. The crest is a heavy felt print, rather than embroidered.  This looks and feels better than the thinner, plasticy print that many kits at the lower end of the game get when embroidery isn’t used.

The Gambia, which takes its name from the river than runs through the country, has been on the international football stage for around 50 years now. Initially an FA was formed in the then ‘British Gambia’ and played a number of matches. With the Gambia gaining independence in 1965, the ‘British’ was dropped.  In 1966, the Gambia FA was formally affiliated with FIFA and CAF.  In their early years, actually playing matches was a rare occurrence.  Despite affiliation in ’66, it wasn’t until 1968 that the national team played again, losing away to Sierra Leone.  There was no quick way to get that loss out of their systems, as it was another 3 years before the team would play.  Again, it was away to Sierra Leone, and again the visitors lost. In 1982, the FA entered a team in World Cup qualifying for the first time.  The Gambians have withdrawn form World Cup and ACN qualifying on a number of occasions, perhaps showing the struggles of being the smallest nation on continental Africa, About a third of the population lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.

Currently, the FA is serving a ban (until 2017) from all CAF competitions for falsifying the ages of players in qualifying for the continent’s u20 championships. 

Indeed, it is at underage level that the Gambians have seen their only  real success.  The u17 boys have won two CAF championships (2005, 2009) and appeared at two World Cups as a result.  The u17 female team have also been at a World Cup, 2012 in Azerbaijan. As mentioned at the start, the u20 men also qualified for the u20 World Cup in 2007.

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