The Brave Warriors’ local-based players held their second training session in Accra on Thursday morning on a bumpy school pitch, which left coach Tom Saintfiet unhappy with the preparations.
“We have had two training sessions on a bumpy pitch in Accra with our home based players. I will only have one full training session with my whole squad in Gambia and this is clearly not good enough’” he said, adding that the odds were now stacked against them.
“I am satisfied with the few players that I have. They have trained quite well and the atmosphere is good. But for the rest it’s not well organised. We are practising on a very bad pitch which makes ball passing difficult, while we can’t really shoot at goal because the goalkeepers cannot dive and we cant train tactically because the whole squad is not here.”
“So I have my doubts if we are ready for it because we havent played for three months and now there is not enough time to train so I’m a bit sceptical about the preparation, but Im very satisfied with my coaching staff and my players,” he added.
Gambia in the meantime announced a strong squad on Thursday morning for the match which includes 20 professional players.
“They have announced a strong squad. They have 20 professionals who play in top or second league divisions in Europe. Some of them play in Scandinavia, in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, some play Champions League football in Slovakia and some play in Greece and the United States. They have a full professional squad which has been together since Tuesday evening. They have had four training sessions together in a country that they know , while my players have not played together for six months with the national team so we have not had any decent preparation for this match and it will be very tough,” Saintfiet said.
Senior players Quinton Jacobs and Richard Gariseb however said that they spirit was high and they were hoping to produce a shock.
“The spirit in the camp is high and the boys are in good form. We’ve had two good training sessions and we are determined to cause a shock,” Jacobs said.
“We are confident that we can pull off a shock because the other teams always underestimate us, so we will use the element of surprise top our advantage,” Jacobs added.
Gariseb said that players were in good mood and looking forward to the match.
“We are fit and we have trained hard. We are now ready for the match and are determined to go and get a good result,” he said.