BY: Media Officer Foday Jatta

Real de Banjul Football Club at the weekend embarked on a three-day recruitment program at the Live Your Dream Sports Academy (LYDSA) complex in Basori.

Head Coach Bye Malleh Wadda and his technical team oversaw the talent hunting activity that involved 34 players including the club’s youngsters of both Team A, Team B and other talents invited from other areas of the country.

Bye Malleh reacted to the three-day program, describing it as a recruitment and scouting program where the club is working on strengthening his side that finished 3rd in the recently concluded season in time for the pre-season.

“It’s recruitment, scouting program, where from last season we are releasing players and we need to recruit to strengthen the team in certain areas. So, the program was basically to look at what talent is out there that we can bring in to support and supplement what we already have so, it’s more like a trial,” our gaffer said.

The program did not just involve youngsters/academy boys but also included were established players of the domestic league who Byes said were included to help them acclimatize to the ways of the club.

“There are players that want to come and play for the club from other clubs so, we want to allow them to acclimatize the club’s way. We also have players that were scouted and have good skills so we thought we bring them in also and see if they’re good enough for the first team.”

Malleh Wadda added: “Alternatively, we are trying to develop a second team and a younger academy program. So, it will help the club identify those that we can sort of curb into the senior team and those that we cannot we sort of push them to the junior team.”

The gaffer also said one of the main reasons for staging the trial is to start a culture of catching them young build them for the future.

“The whole idea is to build a culture for the team and that culture will include raising kids properly at a very early age because we will go as low as under 12s. If we’re able to establish a certain culture in them early enough, it just flows into the programs of the team, because the idea here is, we want to develop these kids early to make sure we stop their bad habits and so forth, and then prepare them for higher leagues in Europe or other parts of the world.”

Byes also alluded to the reason behind early preparation saying that “football is all about preparation and I always say to people; the key to anything in life is health and that for in football is fitness and also to prepare skilled players that feel that they stand a good chance of progressing through Real de Banjul because they have the contacts and facilities to help them get to the next level, so, we want to look at those people and give them opportunities.”

The recruitment program ended on Sunday where Bye Malleh Wadda and the technical team selected the players that caught their eyes, to be integrated into the senior and junior teams.