Gambia

Away, 2007

This particular Gambia shirt was worn by the men's team at the 2007 u20 World Cup in Canada. I’m not sure if these shirts were sold at the tournament, but I sourced this shirt from Germany, which makes some degree of sense as Saller is a German company.

They say what is rare is wonderful, and while Gambian shirts are indeed rare, in this case if being generous you might call the shirt wonderfully plain. It is a standard template from Saller at the time, one which seems have been worn by quite a number of smaller countries during that period. Only the logo and crest add any flashes of colour. Sometimes I like plain shirts, but for simple shirts need to be a good fit and cut. 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 heat-pressed material that many kits at the lower end of the game get when embroidery isn’t used.

The Gambia (and officially, the country is named The Gambia), which takes its name from the river than runs through the country, has been on the international football stage for around 60 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 Football Association (now the Gambia Football Federation, and minus the offical ‘The’) 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 three 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 The Gambians have withdrawn from World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations qualifying on a number of occasions, perhaps showing the struggles of being the smallest nation on continental Africa. When about a third of the population lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day, it cannot be easy to sustain a national football team at a competitive level. And that’s before you factor in corruption from those at the top of the game. A former president of the federation was banned from football activities for four years in 2018, on charges of taking bribes linked to the 2014 FIFA presidential elections. The federation has also served a ban from all CAF competitions for falsifying the ages of players in qualifying for the continent’s u20 championships in 2014.

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.