Gambia Cleared To Return To International Play After 2-year Hiatus

The Gambia’s two-year suspension for deliberately falsifying players’ ages has been lifted by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) following fresh elections that saw former Gambian sports minister Modou Lamin Kabba Bajo voted in as president of the Gambia Football Federation (GFF).

The executive committee of CAF agreed to lift the ban “in the event that elections at the FA were well conducted”.
In a letter, CAF added the ruling was “depending on the fact that all matters of age cheating or similar and punishable offences should not occur in the future”.
CAF had kicked out The Gambia from all of its competitions – including the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations – in May after ruling that the GFF had fielded five over-aged players during a game against Liberia in the African U-20 Championship qualifiers.
In addition, CAF ruled that Ali Sowe, born in June 1994, had been found to have registered in 2012 in the Confederation Cup with an identical passport number but a birth date going back to 1988.
Last weekend’s GFF elections were called following a decision by FIFA’s emergency committee in July to sack the previous executive administration, led by Mustapha Kebbeh. A normalisation committee was put in place to run elections for a new GFF board.