The rise of women’s football in The Gambia is somewhat astounding in fair assessment, and surreal a times in its true comprehension.
In barely over a decade ago, thoughts of seeing Gambia’s women vie for a place in the African Women’s Cup of Nations championship would have been seen as nothing but a delusional fantasy even though the women’s sport was first introduced to the country as early as the late 1990s, although the country’s national team only played its first game in 2007 and has not competed in a match recognised FIFA or CAF match up till 2012, when the two youth teams, an under-17 side that has competed in FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup qualifiers, and an under-19 side that withdrew from regional qualifiers for an under-19 World Cup took to the international stage.
And ever since, the country’s female sport has taken huge strides in its development, despite, like in many African countries, women taking part in a game largely seen as a men’s sports, face many challenges, including both religious and cultural perceptions, norms and stereotypes, with those taking part sometimes being accused of being manly or loose.
But despite this challenges, the growing popularity of women football is helping break those barriers and the presence of a full-fledged national female league or leagues along with results like the one achieved by the Female national team this week, who have reached the second rounds of the AWCON 2018 qualifiers all make huge difference in changing and in improving public perception.
Notwithstanding, there are still challenges and barriers to break, including at institutional level, specifically at the country’s football governing body GFF, who were faced with questions about the circumstances surrounding the Female national team’s travel arrangement from their first leg tie in Burkina Faso last Saturday, where they suffered a narrow 2-1 defeat, and to compound there misery the team had endure a poorly arranged travels through Morocco to come home, where pictures of some players snoozing on airport benches went viral on the social media, prompting some critics to accuse the Federation of not giving the same treatment to the women folks as of their male counterparts, although the GFF countered those claims, dismissing them as unfounded. They put the chaos down to the lack of available flights from Burkina Faso to The Gambia and the short space of time between the game on Saturday and the return leg on Tuesday evening, which gave the team barely 72 hours to get home and prepare for the game on Tuesday, which miraculously they won from a penalty shootout after overturning the result of the first leg with a 2-1 in normal time to set up a second tie against Nigeria’ women team in the first week of June.
The win was historic, and a huge step towards progress that has accumulated over the past decade, where a lot of resources as been invested by the Football Federation, from FIFA’s subventions, 15 percent of which must go to the development of women’s football as a precondition from the World Football Governing Body. And among those developmental programmes is the Live Your Goals project, which is a FIFA initiative designed to create awareness towards women’s football and this was ran annually by the GFF to its 5th edition, which was held in Farafeni in 2016, which they said was ‘to increase the level of understanding in women’s football and to encourage the participation of girls in football in order to realise their dreams.’
And after the victory over Burkina Faso the Gambia’s Female’s coach, Mariam Sowe, Who guided the team to the historic triumph after taking the job in 2017, paid tribute to the Football Federation for their contributions in developing women’s football in the country.
‘I think the GFF has done a great job because they have confidence in us and they registered the team for the first time. They provided us everything we needed and the Coordinator was also running everyday to see that things are going well for us, she said in a post-match press conference, where she also elaborated on the efforts and decisions to made possible their heroics to mount the unexpected come from the brink of elimination.
‘I want to thank God for giving us this victory. We know that Burkina Faso is a big country when it comes to Football but for us, we were expecting a win.
“We learnt a lot at our game in Ouagadogou and we were able to know our weak points and we rectified them’.
‘For us, we were in a hurry to qualify and meet Nigeria because that also is good for us. The girls are all ready for that match and we will prepare for it.
‘For us, we were in a hurry to qualify and meet Nigeria because that also is good for us. The girls are all ready for that match and we will prepare for it.
‘I dropped Ajara because she was not in the 18 but I have replaced her with someone.
‘I have a natural left footer but she was injured and I placed a versatile player in her position. I have many versatile players who can play in that position. This is Football’.
the teams captain Penda Bah aslo paid tribute to their performance, saying: ‘It was a good performance for us and thanks to God, we won at the end of the day.
‘We are going to work harder ahead of the next game with Nigeria’.
