Drama dominated a Senior Challenge Cup match between Tanzania Mainland combined soccer team, Kilimanjaro Stars and their Zimbabwean counterpart, Zimbabwe played at the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam on Saturday.
From the kick off to the end of the match, Young Africans fans in their club colours cheered on, to the amazement of English Kenyan commentators, the yellow shirted Zimbabweans.
Information has it that Yanga fans were ‘forced’ to change their allegiance during the match by two things, the outnumbering of Yanga players by Simba and Azam in the team and the Zimbabweans’ decision to don yellow color which also happen to be Yanga club colors!
Although Kilimanjaro Stars went down 1-2 to the Zimbabweans, however, they qualified for the quarter finals under what is referred to as best losers.
Had Kilimanjaro Stars gone down to the Zimbabweans by not less than three goals, the spot would have been taken by Tanzania’s neighours to the north, Kenya who had gone down by a lone goal to North Sudan in a scintillating match played before the Kilimanjaro Stars/Zimbabwe encounter.
Kilimanjaro Stars’ technical bench led by former Yanga player and coach, Boniface Mkwasa has already complained over the matter.
Although Mkwasa later told a section of the print media that they will try their level best, in the forthcoming encounters in the tournament which start today (Tuesday), to force those against them to cheer them.
Although Mkwasa could not elaborate on how they intended to do that, however, improved performance is certain to earn them support.
One of the commentators had this to say as the match progressed on:
“I would have understood Yanga fans’ conduct if the match was a local derby at club level…but to sideline your own home national team in favour of a foreign team, I’m sorry, I don’t support them (Yanga).”
Personally, I total agree with the commentator’s argument. Indeed, it does not make sense, whatever arguments Yanga fans have. What they did was wrong, period.
I’m quite sure Simba fans would have done the same thing had Kilimanjaro Stars had more players from Yanga.
The main problem with fans from the two clubs is that Tanzania’s football starts and ends with their clubs!
It is very unfortunate that Leaderships in the two clubs have completely failed to transform their fans into patriots, and that is extremely sad.
Of course, the other problem lies with the Tanzanian Mainland players who don’t see their fans’ conduct as a challenge to do better.
Watching Kilimanjaro Stars play last Saturday one thing stood out very clearly, they lacked drive and enthusiasm in the game whenever they had the ball.
However, their Zimbabwean counterparts behaved differently whenever they had the ball.
They held on more intelligently and one would only release the ball to his colleague when he was quite sure that his colleague was best placed to work further on the ball.
Kilimanjaro Stars not only fumbled on the ball, but they always appeared in a hurry to release the ball even when a colleague was tightly marked!
And the end result was that most of their passes went to their opponents who made good use of ball possession to their detriment.
Handling of the ball by Kilimanjaro players clearly showed they lacked confidence, which stems out of lack of top-flight trial matches.
Unless our national soccer teams are exposed to many quality friendly matches at home and abroad, we should simply forget doing well in regional and continental soccer tournaments.
Had Kilimanjaro Stars had a couple of friendly matches before the start of the tournament, they would have done far better in the on-going tournament.
But the fact that better prepared teams in the tournament were not very much different from Kilimanjaro Stars, clearly shows that had the Mainlanders been given not less than five matches they could have given their opponents a run for their money.
In fact, it is wrong for Tanzanian soccer fans to expect good results from an ill-prepared team like Kilimanjaro Stars.
Kilimanjaro Stars are the present Senior Challenge Cup defending champions. Unfortunately their game does not reflect that!
Yet the team’s performance shows that given more trial matches, they are not bad at all.
What the Tanzania Football Federation, TFF, ought to do now is maintain the same technical bench, but try to get as many top-flight friendly matches as possible for the team.
The point is, let Mkwasa and his brother-in-law, Kiwhelu, compete, positively, with the Danish national soccer coach, Jan Poulsen.
One hopes that in their forthcoming matches, the players will put up their all, against their opponents who have been joined by Yanga fans.
Conversely, Kilimanjaro Stars should not look at Yanga fans’ conduct negatively, but rather as challenge to do better and thereby force them on their side.
Secondly, Kilimanjaro players should bear in their mind the importance of their participation in this tournament that is being televised live across the continent.
This affords them the opportunity of being exposed to professional players’ scouts.
In a word, they are in the market!
By Attilio Tagalile
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