Many philosophers and poets have told us that life is a dream. But the fact that life is a dream does not mean that we should imitate all those people who spend their time day-dreaming about what they want or what they want to achieve.

Dreams of that kind are not always very orthodox. In modern football management, senior national teams are very difficult to manage because of the availability of players at your disposal.
The success story of the former U-17 national team lay in adequate preparation. The team spent almost a whole football calender year as a family, criss-crossing the globe with considerable amount of resources being spent. However, this cannot be possible for a senior national team because of the fact that the composition factor of these teams are all professional affairs and they are contractually bound by their employers, ‘the clubs’.

The world football governing body, FIFA, has however, struck a balance to accommodate the interest of both parties. According to article 3 of annex 1, “Release of players for Association teams”, every player registered to a club is obliged to respond affirmatively when called up by his association.
To protect the interest of the employer, FIFA has provided a co-rdinated international calendar intern dame with the period of release from club to national assignment as follows:

- For friendly matches: 48 hours, qualifying matches for an international tournament: four days including the day of the match but the release period shall be extended to five days if the match concerned is held in a different confederation to the one in which the player’s club is registered.

Even though we enjoyed a 2 - 0 victory over Cape Verde in Banjul most soccer analyst were concerned about the inadequate preparation of the team which caused the lack of cohesion.

Strategic Planning

January 2006, the senior national team was registered for Ghana 2008 qualifiers. From a technical point of view, the preparations should have started immediately after CAF’s confirmation based on a three-phase implementation programme: Mental preparation, Physical conditioning and Technical and Tactical planning.

Mental Preparation

Since Gambia was out of the international arena for almost three years, the moment our registration was approved the ball should have been set rolling. All the professional players should have been informed about the FA’s intention which will basically outline the approach with requirements being set according to international standards: one must be a regular player in club level; active participation target in your team be set at 90%; and performance capacity rating at you club must be above average.

These are the realities face by all other professionals who are aspiring to put on their national colours and this alone would amount to a big challenge for all players to uplift their performance capacities. This task would virtually strengthen their mental state minds and their selection to the national team would depend on their performance.

The new work ethic and a mental slogan for every Gambian player will be “I will prove that I deserve to be part of the national team”.

Physical Conditioning

Based on international calender 2006, February 28 to March 1 was put aside for international friendly matches. But since there was no logistical problems this day can be ignored.

May 14 to July 9 was a free period for the FIFA World Cup. This, however, has been calculated to be 56 free dates. 90% of our professional players were on holidays and the situation could have been exploited to call on the services of our local coaches through the coaches association, select the TRB’s to train periodically. No major cost would have been incurred, there would have been no air tickets, accommodation, camping allowances or coaches allowance.

Technical and Tactical planning

August 16 is set aside for friendly matches according to the international calendar. This date could be a priority target date for a trial match in Europe for any coach to prepare his team tactically. Now with two home and away games to play, our priority must be to utilise the dates set in the coordinated international calendar to give the German coach the chance to work with his team. The real role of a national team coach is to shape your team into a closely knit unit. Command of tactics or technique is no guarantee of success.
The most important thing in football management is managing your players. Coaching is all about guiding and giving your players the impression that you can lead them to achieve their ultimate goal. The coach has to build his new team, which means constructing an entire organisation. Gambia’s coach used his tactical knowledge against Algeria and put a very good performance without the background knowledge of his players.
Now the dream of Ghana 2008 can definitely be reality after knowing the strength and weakness of all and setting up an achievable plan of action for the team in the group with their standing. But all what we need to do is devise an achievable plan of action for remaining games.
Those who take their difficulties or misfortunes too seriously get themselves into an inextricable situation because those difficulties can only be over-come if we admit the implication of the recurrence. I am confident that this young and dynamic GFA would do everything possible to make our Ghana dream come true.