Muzzy Carayol on being a Gambian international
Mustapha Carayol on international duty away in Rabat with the scorpions in 2017
By Abdoulie Bah
Mustapha Carayol, arguably the best player on the current scorpions’ roaster who is yet to fulfill his full potential for the Gambia has this weekend been talking a wide range of career issues including about “being a Gambian international” in an interview with #TouchlineFracas podcast in the UK.
The Gambian winger who now plays as for Turkish club Adana Demirspor has not featured for The Gambia national team in recent matches in 2019 due to injuries or other personal reasons which has long held back his career both at club and international level.
Injuries are a fact of life when it comes to playing sports, but some athletes have no luck when it comes to staying healthy. Across all sports, there have been stories of great competitors who had their careers cut short because of a severe bite - or several – from the injury bug. Muzzy comes to mind as a Gambian. Hugely rated by some of England’s big-name managers at some point, fair to say the former Middlesborough and Nottingham Forest star has not quiet hit the heights of stardom that was predicted.
He was asked what the standard is like playing International football for Gambia currently
“In terms of Gambia we have got a decent squad, everyone plays in good leagues over the last few years. We were supposed to play a game in March but obviously I do not think there is going to be international football until next year. I do not think it will affect us, but if it does surely, we qualify because we are top of the table (over Gabon, DR Congo and Angola). It is going to be unbelievable if we qualify.”
On what he put the Gambia’s recent positive results down to – whether it is down to grassroots initiatives becoming better or are players just choosing to play for Gambia more, Carayol stated:
“ Umm I don’t really know, in terms of grassroots I don’t really want to comment on that too much but in terms of the standard of players, everyone is kind of is around the same age and everyone is kind of built around the same time reaching that level. There is a lot of talent but obviously in Africa – the opportunities are very limited. I feel like a lot more boys are getting opportunities... starting to see Gambians playing a lot of agents and scouts are going there picking up players to take to places like Sweden, Norway, Denmark before they filter out”
About why he decided to delay playing for the scorpions since he got his first call-up at 18 years of age Muzzy said “I always turned it down because I wanted to concentrate on my career in England. I kind of needed to build my career first in the conference – and in the conference you do not get international breaks. So, turns out I will be missing games to go play internationally. It did not make sense for me to do that. My mum was like – just concentrate on your football here, you will always have opportunities to play for Gambia.”