The Gambia’s UK based players Modou Barrow, Ibou Touray and Mustapha Carayol were stranded in Lisbon, Portugal , after missing their connection flight to Dakar. And the trio were only expected to arrive in the Senegalese capital in the early hours of this morning, where they will join the rest of the players on camp in Mbour.
The news about the Swansea City star and his compatriot, Leeds United’s Mustapha Carayol left many fans anxious after Barrow posted a picture of himself and his two mates on his Social media page with the caption “Still in Lisbon Portugal after lot of airlines cancelled and lot of things going on got my 2 brothers around me. ”
However, since the new broke out, the GFF have last night done their best to crush those anxieties with the release of a statement on their official website www.gff.gm , reassuring all concerned that the players involved will be arriving in Dakar early on Wednesday morning, just in time to join their colleagues at the training camp in Mbour, before leaving for the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott.
“Gambia’s premier league star Modou Barrow and his compatriots Leeds United’s Mustapha Carayol and RHYLC forward Ibou Touray will now finally arrive in Dakar at 01:00am.” The GFF wrote in their statement. Adding:
“The trio after missing their flight will now depart from Lisbon on Tuesday night en bound for Dakar where they would join the Scorpions in Mbour just ahead to continuing to Nouakchott, Mauritania.”
“The trio are currently at a local hotel in Lisbon before their possible take off to Dakar later at night”.
Travel chaos are not unusual in International football, especially if it involves The Gambia Scorpions. Last year, ahead of the opening game in this same campaign against South Africa, a number of the Gambian players were embroiled in some travelling issues over apparent visa mix ups, which provoked a certain uproar and confusion, made worse by the lack of information coming from those in the camp, which then led to unnecessary speculations and misinformation. The move to come out in earnest this time to shed light on this recent disruption was a good one from the Federation, in order to avoid a repeat of the unnecessary and inaccurate hypothesis of the past.
Now the GFF’s next move should be to try and work on improving the travelling arrangements of the team and players, in order to avoid finding themselves in this sort of undesirable situations. It disrupts the team’s preparations and could affect morale ahead of a very important match. It is by no means ideal for the players who didn’t arrive till the early hours of this morning to prepare properly in barely two days before the game in Nouakchott. They’ve already missed out on two of the training sessions in Mbour, and thus will have very limited time to work with the manager, which is paramount as the first time of meeting the new manager.
