The second Vice President of Real de Banjul, Mr. Bakary K. Jammeh, has shared the club management’s impression on the City Boys’ performance in the first round of the Gambia Football Federation Division One League.

The reigning Champions have been a mainstay on top of the Division One League table having to lead it for most of the first round.

Head Coach Ebrima Jatta and his charges won an impressive ten, drew two and lost only three games throughout the first round with the City Boys scoring 22 goals and conceding only 7 in the process.

The results and hard work has now led to the Club 2^nd Vice President to sit down with the inhouse media to discuss the team’s first round performance and to discuss the transfers of Alasana Yirajang and Ousman Kujabi to Slovakian club FK Železiarne Podbrezová, the performance of the head coach as well as the players camped at Kerr Real.

Asked what’s the impression of the club management after the first round of the team’s title defense season, Mr. Jammeh said…..

“We are relatively satisfied with the performance of the team so far. We are on top of the league table by three points; it’s not a comfortable one, one has to really qualify that. We are the highest scorers, we have one of the best defensive records and we’ve the highest clean sheets thanks to our defense and goalkeepers and by extension to the whole team. So, relatively, it was a very good first half of the season. If we are to repeat that same results in the second half we can say that we’ve ticked our main box. It’s beyond numbers (on the pitch), from a policy point of view we want to be the very best all times in the country and importantly we want to keep this assembly line of these semi professionals, because we are known for that ongoing. So far we have two of our current players who have left for Slovakia, in Alasana Yirajang and Ousman Kujabi. Congratulations to them, congratulations to the Head Coach, Ebrima Jatta and all the technical staff and teammates who have helped them to go. So we are happy with that and hope that we’ll be able to add a few more in the second half of the season because this is what Real de Banjul is about, bettering the life of our young men and also keeping our business model going because when more players go, it means we have more funding to put back into the team, to develop more young ones and also help attract more young players into the club. We have more exciting young players who are yet to reach their potentials. We also have three players selected to the Gambia U20 team but by our standard, it should be more than that! So, if you ask me, that is one area I’m not satisfied with. Three is a good number but I’ll charge our technical team to do more. With the young talented players we have, we can have more and more players in the national teams. Although it’s the responsibility of the national team coach but I believe he selects based on merit, if we have the best players they’ll select them because they want best players.”

When asked how impressed is the board about the job Coach Ebrima Jatta is doing after his promotion to the role of Head Coach after the departure Vjatšeslav Zahovaiko, Mr. Jammeh said…..

“To excel, you need stability and you also you need a system. Real de Banjul has a philosophy. The team started since 1966 and it was a young team, a family both at the management, we’ve been together for four decades now. We want to keep our technical team as long as possible. The ones we don’t to keep are the players. We had Bye Malleh Wadda who we brought to Coach the team for a purpose and now part of the structure of the club to help us redefine our procedures and processes both on and off the field because he is a very experienced man, a good management and good thinker in line with what we’ve been doing. Then we decided to bring a foreign coach because eventually our players are going to play professional and then over the years we have the experience that some are very technically good to adopt to the European way of life comes difficult for them and they will go be come back so in consultation and in agreement with our partner club, Paide Linnameeskond we decided together we will bring someone who will not only be the first team coach but to help us redefine some of our process and bring up to speed our technical staff of which ‘Giggs’ (Ebrima Jatta) is part of. So ‘Giggs’ is a continuation of Slava (Vjatšeslav Zahovaiko), they’ve worked together for a whole season and he (Giggs) has proven that he was a good understudy and then Slava is here you can see it’s same system, the trainings and you can see the results are here to show it. From a Management point of view, we have team of technicians, the Team Manager, Ebrima Camara, the Technical Director, Pa Suwareh Faye is there, Essai (Ebrima Cham) too so it’s not an individual job but of course ‘Giggs’ is doing a good job. In terms of recruitment, retainment of players, in terms of also motivation players and player welfare, you’ll not find any club near Real de Banjul. It is not only a strategy, it is excellence, because we’ve doing that for a very very long time. All the three of us (President William Abraham, 1^st Vice President Pa Yusufa Samba and himself 2^nd Vice President Bakary K. Jammeh) know how to run football and we all have our particular areas of strength to keep the wheel running as long as possible.”

When ask how Real de Banjul would still compete at the top season in season out despite selling a lot of players even in the middle of the season as we recently seen the departure of Alasana Yirajang and Ousman Kujabi to Slovakia, Jammeh said…..

“We always recruit a big pool, some go out on loan. There’s a big amount of Real de Banjul players on loan. The script at the beginning of the season is go win the league and make sure that all the registered players turn professional and then it becomes a team sport. We have never been a one-man team in terms of players, never been a one-man team in terms of technical staff, everyone has your job or a one-man team in terms of management. It has always been a group of people working together for it’s one common purpose, that is to improve this club, improve the lives of the key stakeholders of the club, which is the players, our story, our history and our records shows that.”

Jammeh also took time to share his opinion on the initiative the management took to camp twelve players for five weeks at Kerr Real, saying that: “The camp was our idea, the board. In meeting with some partners in Europe, knowing what is the need on the other side, the sort of players in terms of age bracket, physicality, potential, and also how they can actually integrate when they go there because to be a professional footballer, it requires certain amount of discipline, it requires to being part of a team making it a family that have never been your immediate family, it requires certain amount of behavior and pattern of living in terms of sleeping, training, resting, etc.”

He added: “This has always been our objective and then that is one of our wishes to ensure that all our players wake up under one roof, go to train and sleep under one roof and prepare for games, that is one of the reasons we decided to really invest so much at the Live Your Dreams in Basori. The only missing link there is the accommodation, it’s going to be the home of Real de Banjul for the future. So, we decided to have a trial so we decided to have a trial with the Technical Director, Pa Faye who is restoring the youth players and he had a lot of experience in that, he welcomed it and we pilot it. We want more, we will sit down with the Technical Director at the beginning of the second round to discuss how we can actually expand this (camping of players) and keep it going because we want to be in a situation that goes past that our players go on trials.”

Our Club 2^nd Vice President ended by saying that: “Our players should be able to leave Real de Banjul and just work in the first teams or reserve teams in Europe but not for them to try them. This is the evolution of football. Again, eventually the Gambia Football Federation will have to introduce a professional league and we want to be number one that will register, in fact, today we meet all the registration criteria. We have everything ready, we have the staff, our ownership structure is in line with the law and we even have our financial statements prepared in accordance with the principles of accounting, so we can be a professional club immediately. To be a professional club means your staff and players are taking football for a living, and this is why we thought of this trial camp and it worked well and we will continue doing it”.