Nchimbi is right, TFF must act over Taifa Stars poor performance

The Minister responsible for, among other things, sports, William Nchimbi, was spot on last week when he absolved Danish Taifa Stars’ coach, Jan Paulsen, over the team’s exit from Africa Nation’s Cup (Afcon).

Indeed, anyone in his or her right senses will think in the same way the minister thinks over the senior national soccer team’s run of poor performance.

The minister who was taking part in a telecast debate through the TBC television in Butiama, Mara Region was visibly frustrated over Taifa Stars’ continued failure to do well in Afcon qualifiers.

And as has been in the past, Taifa Stars once again failed to qualify for the Afcon finals after collecting five points from as many matches.

As rightly noted by the minister, the team’s decimal performance does not lie on the coach or the technical bench for that matter, but rather on its preparations.

 And when one talks about preparations here, it does not mean spending days on end in residential training, far from it, but rather playing quality trial matches!

Before the start of the just ended Afcon qualifier as far back as last year, I stressed to the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) through newspaper columns (the Daily News and the Citizen), on the need to organize as many quality friendly matches as possible for the team, but as expected the advice fell on deaf ears!

In fact, the same problem that afflicts Taifa Stars, equally affects our top clubs, Simba and Young Africans, who have repeatedly failed to click in continental clubs’ tournaments.

Tournaments in tournaments out, the so called big guns are knocked out of the preliminaries so much so that even the premier league which helps us in getting representatives for the continent’s Club Champions and Confederation Cups have lately lost its meaning!

Yes, how can we continue celebrating getting tickets for such high profile continental clubs tournaments when we don’t seem to be getting anywhere?

Let’s face it, given our continued failure to go beyond the preliminaries of continental clubs tournaments are clubs like Simba and Young Africans better than Toto Africans and Azam FC?

Taifa Stars and our leading clubs will never get anywhere in international soccer tournaments as long as they continue to prepare for such tournaments at home, ignoring trial matches against top-flight foreign teams!

Now how do we get ourselves out of this cul-de-sac? Do we need to be armed in rocket science in order to transform our teams into winning ways?

The truth is, we don’t! As I had occasion to point out in the past, for a start, the TFF must make it mandatory for all clubs taking part in the premier league to have juvenile teams in their stables.

Secondly, the TFF must make it mandatory for such teams to sign most of their players from their own juvenile teams and other locally based soccer academies.

Thirdly, our soccer fathers should ensure that youthful players take part in the premier league.

The federation needs to come up with a clause in its regulations that would bar clubs from signing foreign players who no longer represent their national soccer teams.

Yes, only players who will help local clubs raise their soccer standard should be signed and not former national players!

Having implemented the foregoing, clubs leaders, including Taifa Stars’ handlers, should then ensure that the teams play more trial matches at home and abroad against high quality opponents.

It is only by playing against top-flight foreign opponents in trial matches that respective technical benches would be able to gauge their teams/players’ response to training.

For instance, as far as Taifa Stars are concerned, surely one should not expect them to do well in the Afcon tournament after playing less than five trial matches against as weak opponents as the Palestinian national soccer team!

What has always beaten me is this belief that we can do well in Afcon qualifiers through the use of almost the same players for the last six or so years!

Yes, somebody ought to come forward and explain to me how we could expect, for the last six years, to continue depending on the services of aging players the likes of Nsajigwa, Haroub, Machupa, Kaseja, Henry Joseph and Nizar Khalfan!

I have always wondered why we have continued to ignore players from Coca Cola tournaments!

For the last three or so years, Tanzania has been represented in South Africa and Brazil by national soccer teams made out of youthful players from Coca Cola tournaments.

The million dollar question is of course why we not been making use of such youthful players?

If a country like Botswana with a population of less than 1.5million can produce a qualifying national team for the Afcon finals out of its juvenile teams, why can’t Tanzania with a population of over 20 million youths?

We ought to do a lot of hard thinking!

 

By Attilio Tagalile

Rest in peace Penza

Last week one of Tanzania’s well known journalists, Mr Juma Penza, silently passed away at the Agakhan Hospital, catching some of us who had been off the press for a week or so, completely unaware!

But given the immense contribution he made in this thankless inky path called journalism, it would be the zenith of absurdity if Penza’s departure was allowed to pass without a word, especially from some of us who had worked under him.

Penza as most of us loved to refer him to, was my boss when I was transferred to Arusha Shihata (Tanzania News Agency) Bureau in June, 1979 after completing my two year diploma course in journalism at the Tanzania School of Journalism, presently School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) of the University of Dar es Salaam.

Originally, Penza was an employee of the Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN), publishers of the Daily News, Sunday News, and lately, Habari Leo.

After being employed as a trainee reporter in the late 1960s, he was in late 1970s sent to the regions as part of the TSN’s efforts to expand its news gathering network.

And when Shihata was formed, a number of TSN reporters in the regions were seconded to Shihata in order to strengthen the newly formed news agency.

A loquacious and jovial man, Penza is one of very few Tanzanian journalists I have personally met and worked with who had very high sense for news, referred to in journalistic realm as a knack or nose for news.

In fact it was his close involvement in news writing that more than once brought him problems during his active days in the profession.

However, the best known incident occurred when he was Shihata Bureau Chief in Tanga in the late 1970s.

The source of the problem were his series of articles on coffee smuggling through the port.

Those involved in the racket included highly placed officials both in the government and the ruling party, CCM who now decided that they would fix him, nowhere, but during a high profile meeting of the central committee of the ruling party, CCM, which was scheduled for Tanga.

As had been planned, Penza’s name was included as one of the CC’s agenda in a meeting that was to be chaired by none other than CCM’s Chairman, the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.

It took almost nine hours to work on the rest of the agenda, and just as Mwalimu was about to close the meeting, one of CC members reminded him about the last issue on the agenda…

At this point, Mwalimu asked the member to explain to him about the Penza issue…

But before he could finish, Mwalimu interjected:

“Do you want the nation to be told tomorrow that a whole CC met to discuss a journalist’s story about coffee smuggling?”

That marked not only the end of witch-hunting against the poor young journalist who had just done his bit of duty, but allowed Penza to continue doing what he knew best, write news.

Penza’s coffee smuggling story is important because there is presently a school of thought among some Tanzanians, including journalists, that during the one party state, party and state owned media only did one thing, they sang about the government in power!

However, a critical appraisal of many stories carried during the time renders such claims baseless.

Indeed, there were stories such as the food and sugar scandals carried by the Daily News published by the government owned Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN), which saw two ministers losing their posts.

 Therefore like the food shortage and sugar scandal, Penza’s coffee smuggling story equally rocked the nation.

Penza was however, not short of controversies. For instance, during one of Shihata Bureau Chiefs’ meetings held in Dar es Salaam, he was accused by some of his colleagues of having misused the company’s fund to the tune of 10,000/-, quite something during the time.

When pressed to explain the form of misuse by the Shihata Director, Mr Hadji Konde (deceased), they claimed that Penza had used the money to buy expensive furniture and other office equipment.

The office equipment turned out to be two desk typewriters and a portable typewriter.

As for the furniture, they were quite expensive, but the kind of what the CAG (Controller and Auditor General), Mr Ludovick Utouh will tell you a value for money (VFM) type of furniture.

Further investigation on the matter later showed that Penza had not misappropriated a single cent, that he had used the money for furniture and typewriter and the Arusha Bureau Office turned out to be the best equipped and furniture office in the country!

After the misuse of funds story was over, Mr Konde now asked the rest to give their opinion about Penza’s work output.

Not a single man raised his finger against the man as statistics showed that he had filed more stories than any Shihata bureau in the country!

However, those who had raised their voices against Penza were not done!

One of the journalists argued that Penza had filed more stories than any bureau in the country simply because Arusha was the seat of an international conference centre.

What the journalist implied was that it was easy to collect and write stories in Arusha than any region in the country.

Asked to comment on the argument, Penza had this to say:

“Stories are written…you don’t collect stories in the streets…”

One day I asked Penza what he had learnt from his journalistic endeavors, and especially, the accusations that had been levelled against him and he had this to say:

 “Regardless of where you are, you can reduce the number of your enemies quite considerably if you work hard. My enemies failed in their effort to destroy me because I had outdone them in work performance…had I had nothing to show in the form of performance, I would have been done!”

That was Juma Penza in his element. Indeed, if there is anything that I learnt from Penza in the course of working under him, it was to work hard in whatever task I was involved in.

And indeed, that has greatly helped in making me what I’m today. Thank you Penza for showing me the ropes, rest in peace.

By Attilio Tagalile

Taifa Stars' Afcon failure: TFF to blame

Taifa Stars complete their last and formality Africa Nations Cup qualifier (Afcon) on Saturday when they are expected to take on Morocco in their own backyard.

The Rabat match will officially mark Taifa Stars’ yet another unfortunate exit from the high profile continental soccer tournament.

The exit will be unfortunate because Taifa Stars blew up their chances due to a variety of factors that included, among others, lack of commitment on the part of the players.

In fact the latter problem was made public by none other than a section of the players when they were beaten by a lone goal by their Moroccan counterparts in the first leg match held in Dar es Salaam.

A number of foreign based players complained that they had lost the match despite getting more scoring opportunities than their opponents for lack of commitment and seriousness.

This problem was first raised by players from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during a tournament held in Cairo, Egypt.

The Congolese players expressed surprise at the lack of commitment displayed by Tanzanian national players when they went down by 5 goals to one against the Egyptian national team, the Pharaohs.

What surprised DRC players was that instead of feeling sorry for losing, Tanzanian players were smiling whenever they Egyptian pumpued in one goal after another!

In their first match played in Dar es Salaam against the Moroccans a few months ago, Taifa Stars went down by one goal to nil in a match they should have either won or at worst, drawn.

And given the clumsy manner in which they played against the Moroccans, Taifa Stars have absolutely no chance against their counterparts!

The last time Taifa Stars reached the Afcon finals was in 1980 when they beat Zambia to qualify for the tournament held in Lagos, Nigeria.

The Saturday match is a mere formality since Taifa Stars lost their contention in the tournament when they allowed a draw in Dar es Salaam against their Algerian counterparts in a game they should have easily won.

When one looks back to past Afcon qualifiers, no tournament presented Taifa Stars with the best opportunity of making it to the finals than the latest qualifier that ends this Saturday.

To date Taifa Stars have five points won from two draws both against the Algerians and one victory against the Central African Republic, CAR.

Had the Tanzania Football Federation, TFF, invested on the team through provision of a series of top-flight foreign friendly matches, Taifa Stars would have won all their four encounters against Algeria and CAR, hence collecting a total of 12 points.

I have singled out the foregoing two teams because their level of performance was not very much different from that of Taifa Stars.

But the Moroccans were of higher pedigree compared to the three teams although they are quite beatable for a well prepared team.  

The collection of the 12 points from Algeria and CAR could have easily landed Taifa Stars in the Afcon finals.

For the doubting Thomas, consider the following: the leader in the group D, Morocco have eight points from as many matches.

The Moroccan position is shared by the CAR who have also bagged in eight points while Algeria have similar number of points with Tanzania, five.

This means that even if the Moroccans win their last game against Taifa Stars, they will still have 11 points, one point less than what Taifa Stars would have had had they beaten Algeria and CAR in all their outings!

The same thing can be said about the CAR. Like the Moroccans they cannot get more than 11 points!

Therefore the TFF’s failure to prepare the team for the tournament has translated into yet another disappointment for the country’s soccer mad fans.

In a nutshell, Taifa Stars’ failure to qualify for the Afcon finals lies in the team’s failure to get as many top flight friendly matches as possible.

In terms of its coaching bench, the team has no problem, especially if one considers the fact that the team’s present coach, Jan Poulsen, was part of the coaching staff that helped the Danish national soccer team win Euro 92!

If one looks around for all the teams that have already qualified for the Afcon finals that include past minnows such as Botswana, one thing that comes out clearly is that apart from having gone through soccer juvenile programs, such teams were subjected to as many top flight friendly matches as possible.

Taifa Stars’ performance in the Afcon qualifier have also been affected by the presence, in the team, of low quality foreign based players.

Indeed, most of the foreign based Tanzanian players except for one or two have had very little impact on the team partly due to the kind of clubs they play for.

Instead of wasting money paying foreign based players’ return air tickets, the money would have been well spent in increasing the players’ allowances.

 By Attilio Tagalile