Tom Saintfiet and his Gambia national football team are leaving people questioning if they will really deliver in the Cameroon Africa Cup of Nations showpiece after they lost two test games on the spin, conceding nine goals and scoring just three.
Many expected the Scorpions to bounce back from a humiliating 7 – 2 against the Moroccan CHAN team when they faced the Leone Stars of Sierra Leone in the second test game, but the narrative remains the same as the Gambian Side failed to find their venom, losing 2 – 1 to Sierra Leone.
The performance is a far cry from their outstanding class and consistency in the AFCON qualifiers finishing top of a group that consists of familiar faces like Gabon, DR Congo and Angola.
Even after that, there has been consistency within the Scorpions camp as manifested in the Turkey training camps where they defeated Niger and Togo and narrowly lost one-nil to Kosovo.
Fans are wondering what went wrong! Is the eleven million saga between the team and the government poking its ugly nose into the camp?
The Gambia government offered D11M to the Scorpions as a token of appreciation for their performance during the AFCON qualifiers, the players rejected the money and failed to meet with President Adama Barrow, claiming the amount was small.
After weeks of consultation amongst themselves, the team decided to reverse their decision, but the government said the money was used in other development projects, a decision that didn’t bode well with players some of whom publicly expressed their disappointment over the saga, yet even this does not explain the teams recent poor run.
Whatever the reason for its current wave of losses underperformance by the scorpions greatly dampens the seemingly indomitable spirit they showed during the qualifiers, leaving fans at low point ahead of nations cup in Cameroon
