AfricaPress-Tanzania: WITH the confirmed comeback of Azam’s hitman Prince Dube, the reigning champions Simba face a litmus test when they host Azam in a Premier League match at Benjamin Mkapa Stadium in Dar es Salaam on Sunday.
Simba are facing a welldrilled Azam parading some of the best players from East, Central and Southern Africa.
Still both teams will be curious to collect maximum three points to continue ascending at the top of the league table as the race towards the championship gets hot game after game.
A hard earned 2-1 victory over Dodoma Jiji at Jamhuri Stadium on Thursday has given Simba a breathing space as they just need to outclass Azam to stand a good chance of derailing the current leaders Young Africans.
After today’s meeting, Simba will have one more game in hand against Namungo FC of which if they will manage to win, automatically, they will seize the driver’s seat of the league from Yanga basing on goal difference.
On the other hand, for Azam, they too need nothing less than a victory from the tense match in order to revive their hopes of fighting for the title at the end of the season.
At the start of the campaign, the Ice cream makers side started on the front pedal winning seven games in a row before things made a U-turn a situation which contributed to the sacking of then Head Coach Aristica Cioaba.
His departure left a vacuum that was latter filled by the incumbent coach George Lwandamina who faces major test this evening. His side has had a couple of friendly matches meant to install team balance between new players and their former counterparts which saw them playing an international signal testing match versus TP Mazembe from DR Congo.
Recently, Azam’s Chief Executive Officer Abdulkarim Amin ‘Popat’ admitted that the clash is going to be tough but was quick to say they are also fully prepared to do good business.
“It is true, we are going to play a big match against Simba but we have had good preparations to make sure that we get something tangible from the game. “We have played several friendly matches and lately, we had a good International friendly encounter versus TP Mazembe (1-1) which gave the coach a good test of his current squad prior to facing Simba,” said Azam’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdulkarim Amin ‘Popat’ on Friday in the city.
He continued: “I have not said that we will win the match but rather we are going to compete and the good judge will be the normal 90 minutes of play. What is remaining now is the work rate of players and the technical bench. “The management of the club has finished its work.
The coach (George Lwandamina) had requested the team to remain in Zanzibar for extra ten days after the Mapinduzi Cup to play friendly encounters, we conceded that.
“After returning to the Mainland, we played a friendly match against KMC which we won and later we, convinced TP Mazembe to play with us. In such doing, the management has nothing more to do since we have played our part and the remaining portion is for the team to execute their role,” Popat said.
The return of Prince Dube in action after recovering from his injury has beefed up the striking force of the club which was not that sharp during his absence and it remains a puzzle if he will have a chance to net today
