Darboe and Colley leading streetwise Africa Cup of Nations debutants Gambia

Ebrima Darboe is reflecting on the sharper edges Gambia have brought to this Africa Cup of Nations and lands upon the influence of his club manager. “He’s helped me a lot with my character,” says the young Roma player of José Mourinho, who has kept him close to the first-team squad this season. “I was such a good person and he taught me that in football you don’t have to be too nice, you have to be nasty.”

The point is relevant to Gambia’s eye-catching Cup of Nations campaign. They are debutants and nobody would, on the face of things, have expected much from a side representing the continent’s smallest mainland country. But the Scorpions had an excellent group stage, beating Tunisia and drawing with a fancied Mali, and face Guinea on Monday in an extremely winnable last-16 tie. They have done it by boxing clever: once maligned, Gambian players are making their way in Europe’s bigger leagues and discovering the streetwise edge of winners.

“We used to play tiki taka, just trying pretty football, and in the end we’d lose 2-0 or 3-0,” reflects the Sampdoria defender Omar Colley, who joins Darboe among six Italy-based players in Tom Saintfiet’s well-travelled squad. Colley was in the Gambia team that won the African Under-17 Championship in 2009 but never expected them to make the next step. For scouts and agents, the country was a blind spot engulfed by its glamorous neighbour Senegal; a two-year ban from continental competitions in 2014, handed down for fielding overage players at under-20 level, did not help – but the new generation are in demand.

“If you look at our previous youth teams, most of the guys eventually stopped because of limited opportunities to turn professional,” Colley says. “After three or four years