The Gambia Football Federation (GFF) has been suspended for two years by the continent’s soccer governing body Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) over issues of age cheating.
A couple of days ago, we reported how the organizing committee of the U-20 Africa Championship disqualified the Gambia U-20 team from the competition’s qualifiers for fielding ineligible players for that age category in their game against Liberia.
In line with ‘Article 37 Paragraph 1’ of the regulations of the African U-20 Championship, which states “for any deliberate intention to foul or cheat in any matter involving the falsification of documents, the defaulting association shall be suspended for two years from all CAF competitions”.
The players in question were born in 1994 whilst the competition according to a CAF circular dated 2 September 2013 is open to players born on 1 January 1995 or after.
CAF launched an investigation into the case of these player Ali Sowe, born on 14 June 1994 with passport Number 332465 who was one of five players which led to the suspension of The Gambia following a seating on April 30 chaired by Issa Hayatou; the CAF supremo.
Sowe had already registered with CAF in 2012 with Gamtel FC in the Orange CAF Confederation Cup with the same passport number but date of birth of birth as 14 October 1988.
“The CAF President reiterated zero tolerance in such cases of fraud and urged members of the Executive Committee to continue strict enforcement in these cases to permanently rid African football of practices violating ethics and morality,” part of statement on cafonline read.
Gambia’s disqualification means that Seychelles automatically go through to the second qualifying round for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations and will meet the winners of the tie between Swaziland and Sierra Leone for the right to join Cameroon, DR Congo and Ivory Coast in Group D of the qualifying group phase.
In 2010, Uganda was disqualified from the U-17 Africa Youth Championship after using Ivan Ntege; an allegedly overage player.
However, CAF only banned Uganda from that competition but not all competitions. It remains to be seen whether Gambia will appeal against the decision.