As had been widely expected, Tanzania’s U-23 national soccer team is of out of the run of Olympic Games after being knocked out by their Ugandan counterparts, the Kobs.
And it is just a matter of time their senior brothers, Taifa Stars, will be equally knocked out of the Africa Nations’ Cup qualifiers.
The source of U-23 national soccer team’s debacle just like what is awaiting Taifa Stars is the same; failure by the Tanzania Football Federation, TFF, to link their national soccer teams’ training schedule with quality international friendly matches.
Efforts to drum to the (TFF), the importance of getting our national soccer teams as many quality friendly matches as possible have unfortunately gone unheeded.
Yet a glance at how other developed and developing like Tanzania, have used quality international friendly matches in fine-tuning their national soccer teams abound.
Close home, the best practice in this sector is provided by South Africa whose national soccer teams, that include Bafana Bafana, (the boys) have been doing quite well as a result of the policy.
Barely three years after getting a black majority government (in May 1993), in January 1996, Bafana Bafana won the Africa Nations Cup in Johannesburg after beating Tunisia 2-0 in the final through Mark Williams’ goals.
The main source of Bafana Bafana’s victory was a series of quality international friendly matches that totaled 53 by the time they started the continental tournament.
The implication of the foregoing is that the South African senior national soccer team was playing not less than 18 matches in year!
In fact, I can personally vouch on what I’m saying because during the time, I was working as a producer/presenter for Radio Channel Africa (then external broadcasting station of the South African Broadcasting Corporation-SABC) in Johannesburg.
By the time Bafana Bafana started the tournament, they had played against all Africa’s former Africa Nations’ Cup champions, except Nigeria’s Green Eagles, that had refused to travel to Johannesburg for the tournament following political conflict between the two countries.
Some of the top African nations Bafana Bafana had played against included Ghana’s Black Stars, Eypt’s Pharaohs, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi etc.
From outside the continent, the Mandela boys had played against the mighty Brazilians, Argentina and wound off their training with a clash against the German national soccer team two days before the kick off of the Africa Nations Cup tournament in South Africa.
However, what is interesting about our national soccer teams, and Taifa Stars in particular, is that with the exception of the years preceding the country’s first and last qualification for the continental tournament in 1980, have gone into tournaments without playing a single international friendly match!
It would be recalled that Tanzania qualified for the continental tournament in Lagos, Nigeria in 1980 because it had played a number quality international friendlies both within and outside the continent.
It had travelled to far off countries that included the then Soviet Union and Mexico and flew straight to the then Nigerian capital, Lagos.
How the TFF expect Tanzania to forge ahead in such high profile tournaments where other countries invest fortunes remains a conjecture!
As I have already stated, our U-23 national soccer team’s defeat was expected and the same thing will sooner than later befall their senior brothers for the simple reason that they have played very few friendly matches.
What is unfortunate about us is that we are still cast in the mould of past years when national soccer teams heavily depended on residential training!
Modern soccer requires that we subject our national team(s) in numerous international friendly matches as opposed to playing against stunted opponents, Simba and Young Africans!
Interestingly, the residential training mentality is not confined to national soccer teams per se.
It is a sickness that has equally afflicted our so called big guns, Simba and Young Africans, clubs which have contributed quite considerably towards our underdevelopment in soccer.
While other top-flight soccer clubs in Africa have been criss-crossing the world in search of friendly matches, Tanzanian clubs have stuck to antiquated training programs.
The second problem has been failure both by the TFF and top flight local clubs to tap on youth talent through the use of the Coco Cola youth tournament.
In the last four years, Tanzania has had four different national U-17 soccer teams which defeated a number of high profile foreign teams in Brazil and South Africa.
Yet no effort was made both by the TFF and clubs to recruit players from the four teams.
Had the bulk of the players in the most successful national U-17 soccer team four years ago been recruited to form the nucleus of Taifa Stars and the resultant team been subjected to a series of quality international friendly matches, Tanzania’s qualification for Africa Nations Cup this year would have been certain.
But the fact that that was not done, we should simply forget making it into the continental finals!
Presently, Simba and Young Africans are busy, recruiting players for the premier league next season.
What is however, unfortunate about the exercise is that the two clubs are spending millions of shillings in buying worthless foreign players!
What is more, the exercise is used by some members in the clubs in siphoning money from clubs and the so called sponsors under a cloud of getting new foreign players.
The easy availability of such funds is what has also played a major role in bringing about instability in the two clubs, not to talk of gate collections, especially when matches are held at the new national stadium, but that is another story that requires separate treatment.
When all is said and done, perhaps the most unfortunate thing has been the TFF’s failure to enforce its own directive that all premier league clubs started and maintain juvenile soccer teams.
By Attilio Tagalile
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