The development of the modern game is moving at a faster pace than ever before. The game of football is one of the best weapons to unify a nation. The qualification of Cote d’ Ivoire to the 2006 World Cup in Germany played a vital role for the unification of their war-torn country.

The only time Gambians put aside their differences and rallied behind a single activity was the 2005 Under 17 uphoria caused by the Peru performance.
Gambians should come to terms with the fact that, the 6th edition of the CAF U-17 Championship and Peru 2005 performance was the first step towards reaching South Africa 2010, according to the developmental agenda. We called it Phase One. Now we are talking about Phase Two of the agenda, and thank God we have managed to cross one hurdle leading us to a higher level. The team is now matured as a unit, with better personnel in terms of competition experience.

A national team means total ownership by a nation, The Gambia is no exception. The FA does not own the team, but they are just custodians. They are the servants to administer the affairs of running the game in the country.

Therefore, the ownership of this team cannot be claied by any individual. If the team performs well every Gambian would rejoice for the victory, if the team performs badly every Gambian feels the sorrow-that is the reality. If football development is moving at a faster pace than ever before, and we want to associate ourself with that development, then we need to move with the same pace to be in line with development. Accelerating rate of change in every area of human endeavour is making current knowledge obsolete and quickly rendering our true ways of doing things less effective.

The idea of putting boxes at strategic positions is not something bad but it will not solve our problems. We have been putting boxes for the past two decades but we always ended collecting very little money. Then the burden goes back to the institutions or the President. Let us try to shift gear to another meaningful venture.
The parastatals and the private sectors are now donor fatigue. The question is, do we still want to exploit the resource of our growing institutions? Yes come what may, the parastatals and the private sector must donate as they are obliged to, if the football association cannot provide the needed funds, but in reality it is the responsibility of every Gambian to assume its national obligation towards the success story of this campaign. Let us give Gambians the ownership they deserve officially by total involvement.

In a population of 1.5 million inhabitants if very head donates D10.00 towards the venture, we are talking about D15 million. D10 million could be the projected figure then the d .5 million the uncertainty figure. Generous donors can still come forward to cover the uncertainty figure.

Now the question is how do we implement this operation and where would the initiative comes from. Operation Total Involvement For Congo 2007 should be taken seriously because it is another chance for The Gambia to showcase its values in footballing terms to another continental arena once again leading us to Phase Three of the developmental agenda towards South Africa 2010. Kabba Ceesay Sports File The Daily Observer Newspaper