By: Arfang M.S. Camara
Gambia’s Coach Tom Saintfiet has stated that it was not an easy decision to make the final list of 28-man squad from the initial 40-man provisional squad.
“It’s never an easy decision to drop players from the 40-man provisional squad because we always have to look in the future and as coach and staff, you never know what is going to happen in the tournament,” said Tom Saintfiet during an interview with Lamin Fadera.
Tom Saintfiet announced his final 28-man squad from the previous 40-man provisional squad for next month Afcon tournament in Cameroon.
He added that they made decisions based on their opponent, “What we think. What we would need in this kind of game and possible opponents. Things could happen such as injuries, red cards and yellow cards.”
He further said: “We need alternatives for every position and naturally we also need to think about the group that stays longer together. It has to be the right, cohesive and dynamic group and lastly we look into players that were very important in the qualification process and we wanted to reward them to be part of the group of 28-man squad.”
According to him, everyone who is in the selection deserve to be selected, noting that naturally there are some players who are not in the selection who could be also in the selection “but the group is limited to 28 so we have to make choices”
“We are still busy with preparations now that it is always difficult to have the funds to prepare training camps, flights and everything. We are working for 8 months on that and we are still waiting for confirmation on that and am very positive that everything will be fine by Monday when we are flying to start our training camp,” says the Belgian Coach.