You might have seen some pictures floating around of the Gabon national team having to stay the night in Banjul Airport in The Gambia, which included Arsenals’ Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The players had their passports taken and were forced to sleep on the floor, with a few of them documenting their ordeal on social media and actively asking why this was the case.
There’s still no real answer, although Africa Foot United suggest the Covid-19 tests undertaken by the Gabon team ‘hadn’t been accepted by the Gambian authorities’, thus the need to stop the players from entering the country.
Either way, this didn’t go down well with the Gunners, as Aubameyang’s national team manager, Patrice Neveu, told Canal Plus.
He said: “Arsenal called Pierre-Emerick. After seeing him in those conditions, it’s over… They won’t let him come again, and it will be the same for players from other clubs.
“It’s understandable. They are high level players and when they come on international duty, they need to have a minimum of comfort”.
He added, courtesy of L’Echo Republicain: “All the players tried to sleep on the airport floor. imagine if Aubameyang, a player who costs more than €1m/month, gets injured… The English club can be annoyed after what’s happened. To make a player sleep the floor…”
Whether this lasts forever or for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic remains to be seen, but it appears this could be the last Gabon fans see of Aubameyang in their country’s shirt for a while.
