By Dennis Omolo,
The Gambia. January 2012. Just six years after being part of her country’s first ever women’s football team, Chorro Mbenga, now a coach, is staring at a near impossible task. She is the head coach at the Red Scorpions FC, Gambia’s most successful ladies team. But her new assignment is daunting. She has been charged with helping a man named Buba Jallow select the finest young female footballers the small West African nation has to offer, see them gel, tweak them, and then enter the team in the CAF qualifiers for the 2012 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Azerbaijan later that year.
Buba and Chorro, a head tactician and his deputy respectively, get down to work. Due to the existence of very few ladies’ teams in the top flight and second division, their options are limited. At a time when the women’s game is still in its infancy in the country, they have to make do with what is before them.
An initial pool of 49 eager teenagers is whittled down to a final 24. Chorro’s Red Scorpions have just won back to back premier league titles so it’s not surprising that they should form the backbone of their nation’s U-17 team. Led by Adama Tamba, a 13-year-old two time golden boot winner, her twin sister Awa, and a skilful forward in the shape of Penda Bah, the final team roster looked satisfactory. Now all that remained was two rounds of qualification and this group of players would be catapulted to stardom. In the process they would achieve a feat never before imagined.
The qualifiers
The qualifying tournament was to produce the three CAF representatives at the global showpiece. The Gambia were drawn against Sierra Leone in the first knockout round to be played over two legs on a home and away basis. The first game played in Banjul later that month produced a perfect result for the hosts. A 3-0 scoreline, the result of attractive attacking football set the stage for a good campaign. And Adama Tamba marked her national team debut with a goal. Penda Bah and Fatou Darboe grabbed the others.
A fortnight later Sierra Leone gave the Girl Scorpions a scare. ‘We went to Sierra Leone fatigued and it showed in that result’, Adama recalls. Introduced in the 81st minute, she didn’t score but was relieved to see the team qualify for the next stage on aggregate. Their 1-3 loss away served as a lesson. The dream was still on. Next up was Tunisia in the final two-legged encounter.
The girls went into the first tie as underdogs. Played in Brikama, the match looked headed towards a goalless draw until Fatou Darboe’s strike separated the north from the west. Adama and her mates carried a 1-0 advantage to Tunis a fortnight later hoping to seal what would be an historic qualification. That away game almost unraveled in the early exchanges when the West Africans conceded an own goal. But they showed character to recover from the setback and turn the match around. Awa Demba and Adama Tamba got the goals that sent the nation of slightly under 2 million into ecstacy. The giant had been slain. And the Girl Scorpions would represent Africa alongside perennial travelers Ghana and Nigeria.
Beginnings
Adama and her twin sister Awa Tamba were born on 29th August 1998 in Banjul. Their mother passed on soon after due to birth related complications. This misfortune rendered the infants under the care of a paternal aunt (their absentee father would only make a fleeting appearance 8 years later). Left with twins who needed specialized attention, she decided to seek help at the SOS Children’s Village Bakoteh. Bakoteh is a district in the city of Serekunda, the largest city in the Gambia. It is situated in the Greater Banjul, which also includes the nation’s capital Banjul. The Children’s Village tries to improve the situation of vulnerable children and families by providing education and medical care. Adama and Awa became part of one of the SOS families caring for children in distress. Here they could get the attention they required.
‘Growing up in the village shielded us from the ravages of poverty that we were born into. I’m grateful because we never lacked anything apart from parental love,’ Adama says as she reflects on her time there. The SOS Village incorporates the SOS kindergarten, and the Hermann Gmeiner Primary School and a secondary school. This is the educational path the twins took.
To make meaning out of life, they found comfort in football during their free time. It soon became clear that they were gifted, Awa leaning towards defence and Adama proving to be the skilful attack minded one. It was just a matter of time before they got a chance at a local club.
Adama and her sister Awa in 2012
That chance came in 2009. Chorro Mbenga, a former national team player, had set up a club called the Red Scorpions in Banjul and was looking for talented young girls to be groomed for the future. The twins’ elder sister, already a player there, recommended them to the coach. And so it was that two girls, just months shy of their 11th birthday, found themselves in what was about to become the Gambia’s most successful women’s topflight side. They made their debuts in the 2010-11 season and Adama announced herself to the fans by banging in 12 goals and bagging the golden boot award. In the following season her haul was one better and she therefore went to Azerbaijan in September 2012 as a 14-year-old with 25 league goals to her name.
Azerbaijan, the Land of Fire
Prior to the Girl Scorpions’ heroics in Tunis, the Gambia had never qualified a women’s side to a major tournament. This U-17 team had won their country over and done their part in trying to raise the status of the women’s game there.
They arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan after a 9-day residential camp in Rabat. While in Morocco they had played two warm up games and posted encouraging results. Their attackers, Penda Bah and Adama Tamba, had shone and the signs were there that they would put up a decent show in Azerbaijan.
Compared to Ghana and Nigeria, the other African representatives at the tournament, the Gambia were considered by the global audience as outsiders. They were debutants and also carried the tag of having the tournaments youngest team. Untested at the highest level, they didn’t know what to expect. And as they would soon learn, experience is a huge factor in tournaments.
Their first game was a disaster. Korea DPR walked all over them to register an 11-0 win. Next came the USA who gave them 6-0 hiding. Two games, 17 goals conceded. Adama and her friends were technically out of the tournament. Their last group game against France became a question of how many goals they would ship in.Eventhough the French scored 10 in that match, the West Africans were able to register their first two goals at a major tournament. One of the scorers on the day was the tournament’s youngest player, 13-year-old Sainey Sissohore. Our Adama didn’t have a sniff. The learning curve had proved too steep.
‘Coach Chorro had urged us to use the tournament well since the exposure would make it easier for us to be scouted by the major clubs. Her hope was to see as many of us as possible getting opportunities in better leagues. Most people looking at the scorelines will say we didn’t do our best. But we did,’ Adama insists.
Part of the action during the last group game against France at the Dalga Arena on 29th September 2012. (Photo:FIFA)
‘Against Korea we took too long to take in the occasion. We didn’t settle. Azerbaijan gave us a culture shock. We moved, very quickly, from playing in front of a handful of fans to an arena with very big crowds that sang and roared. The other teams also proved to be better tactically. What we lacked in terms of stardust and technique we tried to compensate for with aggression and resilience. It just wasn’t enough,’ she adds.
She has a point though. A very good case is their match against the USA where they put up such a fight in the first half that the Americans, clear favorites, struggled to find their rhythm before leading 1-0 at the break. Their first game had deflated them, with Korea registering 17 shots on target to Gambia’s none. But the US met a resilient side that was only undone by fatigue in the second period.
‘Azerbaijan was a great lesson for me as a striker. Brushing shoulders with the best in the world reminds you of how hard you still have to work. I think, under the circumstances, we did well.’
The Aftermath
After that blip in Azerbaijan, Adama set out to pick herself up and improve. She scored 20 league goals in the 2012-13 GFF Women’s Premier league season and made her debut for the senior national side two years later against Glasgow Girls, a Scottish premier league side that was on a tour of the country. She scored both goals in the 2-0 win.
The Glasgow Girls team that played against the Girl Scorpions
In 2015, after scoring 8 goals in the opening league fixtures, she was on her way to another golden boot award when calamity struck. Some of her teammates attacked a referee in a cup game. The players were suspended for 12 months and the team relegated to the second tier. They were also stripped of the league title previously won.
But when you are fueled by lots of determination then such setbacks can’t derail you. Adama Tamba has made the best out of that situation. In April 2017, during the Red Scorpions’ last league match in the second tier, she scored her 50th league goal. 11 games, 50 goals. And all of them coming in 2017. Historic. Her team have finished the season unbeaten and have been reinstated back to the topflight.
The twins’ time at the SOS Village is up. They now live with coach Chorro Mbenga, her dad and brothers in Jeshwang, a town on the outskirts of Banjul. And Adama’s dream is to one day give back to the people who’ve supported her for so long.
The twins. No stronger bond than this.
‘Coach Chorro gave me a chance I never thought I could get. Right from day one when she took me into her team she’s treated me like her daughter. She advises me before every game and I hope one day I’ll make her proud. My sister Awa is my biggest fan. She prays for me a lot. I’m lucky to be surrounded by so much love, ‘she adds.
In an interview with the BBC’s Alastair Leithead early this year after the return of President Adama Barrow, she said she was hopeful many things would change in her country. But she is aware that to make the kind of impact she is capable of in football, she will have to look for opportunities abroad. There are only twelve teams in her country’s first two divisions, six in each.
‘My dream is to play football in Europe. I admire England’s Manchester City Women and Olympique Lyonnais Féminin in France. Carli Lloyd, my idol, plays for City so I follow them a lot and OL are simply the best club in women football. I hope one day I can show the world what I can do at the highest level. I believe I can compete,’ she says.
And her dream isn’t out of place. She draws inspiration from two players she met in her last game at the U-17 World Cup- France’s Delphine Cascarino and Griedge Mbock. Mbock went on to become the FIFA Player of the Tournament in Azerbaijan. And the pair have broken into the Olympique Lyonnais first team and the French national team at the senior level.
It’s the dream of every young player to turn pro. But for Gambians, looking for opportunities abroad largely means putting your life at risk. To reach Europe, many use ‘the back way’, a treacherous journey than involves crossing the Sahara and surviving the Mediterranean Sea. And it is one that has thrown up many sad stories. One such tale hit Adama’s team hard. In 2016 their goalkeeper, Fatim Jawara, went missing and then weeks later word came that she had drowned in the Mediterranean trying to make it to the Italian island of Lampedusa. She had told close friends that she was going to look for a better life in Europe.
Once in a while someone manages to succeed in these attempts. In 2014 a young footballer named Bakery Jatta took the dangerous journey and finally landed in Germany. He was signed by Hamburg in the Bundesliga last year. But such stories are rare and Adama wants to take a different route.
Bakery Jatta after signing for Hamburg in 2016. He took the dangerous journey through ‘the back way’ and landed his dream.
‘I was saddened by Fatim’s death. She was a good friend and we shared a lot. It’s a pity she lost her life trying to make it better. The risks are many when using the back way. I would like to get and an agent who can connect me with a team in Europe. It would be better to go that way.’
And so the 18-year-old has to bide her time. Getting an agent with such connections and is willing to fund the air travel is not easy. But there’s a feeling that it is just a matter of time before this story finally takes off. For now Adama Tamba will continue doing what comes naturally- scoring goals with the poise of an assassin and the precision of a marksman. This is just the opening chapter.
