Alright, so, I’ve been digging into this whole Guinea versus Gambia soccer thing, and let me tell you, it’s been a bit of a rabbit hole. I wanted to see what the deal was with their matches, you know, get the lowdown on how they’ve fared against each other.
First off, I started by just throwing “Guinea national football team vs Gambia national football team matches” into the search engine, nothing fancy. Just wanted a general overview to get my bearings. The results were a mixed bag, a bunch of different websites, each with their own take on the stats.
I decided I needed to get organized, so I started jotting down the dates of the matches. January 19, 2024, was the most recent one, it seems. That one took place in Yamoussoukro, at the Stade de Yamoussoukro. Fancy name, right? Then I went further back, found a match from January 12, 1979. Quite a time gap there!
I saw somewhere that they use a point system for yellow and red cards, kind of like a penalty system. Yellow cards are worth one point, and red cards are three. Not sure how official that is, but it’s interesting. I didn’t find the full list of who got carded when, but I did make a note of the final scores. Like, in the 1979 match, it was a tie, 1-1. The data are so messy, scattered everywhere, and I didn’t record every details, only the things I found really interesting.
Here is what I tried to pull together, my very own little table:
- Date: January 19, 2024
- Location: Stade de Yamoussoukro, Yamoussoukro
- Event: This was a big tournament, from what I gather.
- Date: January 12, 1979
- Result: 1-1 (Draw)
But the thing is, the data is all over the place. Different sites have different bits of information, and some of it’s incomplete. Like, I found one site that had a match from December 5, 2007. That day was a result of 0-3, Guinea lost. It’s a pain trying to piece it all together. The information are so messy and I was losing my patient.
Then there was this bit about the Gambian National Football Team, nicknamed the SCORPIONS. Apparently, the last time they played at their home stadium was in March 2021. I just jotted that down because it seemed interesting, although I didn’t know what to do with such info.
So, I ended up with a bunch of notes, a bit disorganized, but it’s a start. I still have not figured out how often these two teams have actually played each other, but I guess I could say I started to get some idea about their rivalry. It’s definitely not as straightforward as I thought it would be. There are so many matches that happened in the history, and there is no easy way to find all of them in one place. I guess I just need more time. It’s a good practice of collecting and analyzing data.
The lesson I’ve learned?
Sometimes, you gotta roll up your sleeves and do the dirty work yourself. Pulling data from the internet is not easy, and making sense of it is another whole process. It’s a valuable skill to know how to do it. And the lesson for today, is that I need more practice.
