But while nearly all Gambia's better football clubs have lost a few players - the current Gambia cup holders, Wallidan, have had six or seven take the Back Way - none have suffered as badly as Banjul United.

The club formed just seven years ago to develop talent from Banjul Football Academy, and were promoted to Division One in 2013. Such is their reputation that their dusty training ground in Banjul's KG5 district occasionally receives visits from talent scouts, one of whom signed a winger, Pa Omar Babou, to an Israeli Premier League side, Maccabi Haifa, earlier this year.

But many of the club's young players are not prepared to wait around in the hope of being head-hunted. "I tell them to be patient, but the scout system is too slow for them and they believe things are quicker just by going straight to Italy or Spain or Germany," said Ebou Faye, the club's manager. "When one leaves, others follow."

Part of the problem is that the club's training ground lies just close to a bus terminal frequented by people smugglers. For a fee of around £1,000, they will courier people onwards through Senegal and Mali to the main people-smuggling hub in the city of Agadez in Niger, from where convoys head across the Sahara to the Libyan coast.