The Gambia Scorpions are preparing to host Liberia when the joint qualifiers for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and Nations Cup resume next month, and the Gambia Football Association have confirmed there would be no warm-up match for the Scorpions ahead of the tie which is dubbed by both sides as a “must win” cracker.

The Scorpions will receive the Lone Star on Saturday, September 6, before traveling to Dakar in mid-October for the final qualifier tie against the Terenga Lions. The Scorpions need to win both games in order to progress to the next qualifier phase.

Cognisant of the need to better prepare the team ahead of these crucial ties, the Gambian football authorities were planning to hold series of friendly matches with widespread talk of the Scorpions taking on either Iran or Qatar in a friendly before the Liberia game.

However, any possible plan to stage such a friendly for the Scorpions will no more materialise owing to lack of cooperation from the countries approached.

The GFA secretary general, Jammeh Bojang, told Gambia Sports’ Baboucarr Camara that his association didn’t have the cooperation of all the countries approached for a possible test match.

“We wrote to the Iranian Federation to invite us over for a test game. “At first they seemed genuinely interested but at last minutes some stumbling blocks emerged which prevented us from proceeding with the plans much to our deep disappointment,” Bojang told gambiasports.gm.

The GFA scribe revealed that after the collapse of the Iran talks, Qatar were then approached, but added “this also did not materialise”.

“When we also failed we decided to try Sierra Leone. But that option also didn’t go through because of the large sums of money they were asking for.

“Sierra Leone asked us to airlift ten of their players who were playing in various countries around the world and fifteen local based players.

‘We were also to provide full accommodation and pay them US$30000.00 as appearance fee. “When we budgeted this and then added the cost of airlifting our own foreign-based players the total cost came up to 3.5 million dalasis.

“This is money the GFA does not have and so we had no option but to call off the attempt to arrange a test match”.

Gambia’s Group 6 table is currently topped by Senegal with 8 points, followed by Algeria with six points. The Scorpions lie at third place with 5 points, while Liberia whose dream of qualification is all but over, lie at the bottom with only 2 points.