The Ministry of Youth and Sports wishes to inform the general public that following the unfortunate disagreement between the national team players and the Gambia Football Federation (GFF), resulting in the team not showing up for training at the Stadium yesterday, H.E President Adama Barrow, after consultation with the Minister of Finance has given directives for the payment of the said amount.

The Ministry through the NCC has earlier today paid the D38 million cheque to the Team Manager for distribution among the players, coach and technical staff.

While the Ministry regrets the unfortunate episode, we wish to state that, qualification bonus was not arranged by the Ministry, neither included by GFF in the AFCON budget submitted due to the team’s captain request that they would prefer Diplomatic passport over monetary compensation for qualifying- a request that was granted by H.E President Barrow. It was therefore surprising, that after government agreeing to increase by 100% the AFCON camping allowance to €5000.00 per player and €2500.00 for technical staff and between €5000.00 to €10,000.00 for every match winning bonus, the team insisted on an economically unsustainable demands that the Ministry wasn’t privy to.

Nonetheless, having settled this unanticipated cost, and going into AFCON, the Ministry hopes the team will focus on the matches ahead and display respectful performance as known of them, with a view to building on the success of last AFCON.

While we call on the nation to continue to rally their support to the Scorpions as we wish them best of luck, we reiterate the government’s commitment to go beyond limits to support players’ needs and Sports development in general.