NATIONAL Under-17 Serengeti Boys are all set to upset Liberia as the two sides meet for a special football competition organised by the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) at Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam today.
The three-day competition which is expected to end on Saturday has brought together three U-16 national teams from Liberia, Malawi and the host Tanzania.
On Thursday, Liberia will face Malawi while the home team will wrap up their mission on Saturday by taking on Malawi with all games timed to begin at 9:00 am.
According to the TFF Media and Communication Officer, Clifford Ndimbo, the contest has been arranged to provide a preparation platform for the country’s U-17 team ahead of their busy schedule in the qualifiers of 2021 U-17 African Cup of the Nations (AFCON) whose finals will be played in Cameroon.
“We strongly believe that our team will receive good preparation games from the two invited national teams as we want to go further during the next year’s edition,” said Ndimbo.
“We have deliberately decided to call Under-16 players because by next year, they will be 17 years old as such, eligible for the youth football competition,” Ndimbo said.
Tanzania hosted the past edition (2019) of U-17 AFCON tournament of which Cameroon emerged champions after defeating Guinea 5-3 on post-match penalties as the normal period of play elapsed goalless.
It was however unsuccessful mission for the country’s representatives Serengeti Boys who failed to impress after losing all their three group stage matches which saw them finishing the contest without bagging any point.
They accepted defeats from Nigeria (5-4), Uganda (3-0) and Angola (4-2) to stay bottom placed under then Head Coach Oscar Mirambo who is now the federation’s Technical Director.
The outcome did not go well with some sports sectors in the country which led to the sacking of the entire team’s technical bench on condition that they failed their job despite having ample preparations for the team to do well on its home soil.
However, the country’s lads narrowly missed a golden chance to step into the semifinals during the 2017 U-17 AFCON qualifiers which was staged in Gabon as they finished on third slot in their group B with four points.
They posted one victory (2-1) over Angola before a goalless draw against Mali and a 1-0 loss to Niger respectively which was a better performance from them at away territory.
Niger finished second with four points similar to Tanzania but the former cruised to the next stage courtesy of a head to head rule as Tanzania lost 1-0 when the two sides met in the contest.
The Gabon mission was under then Head Coach Bakari Shime who is now in charge of all national women’s football teams and is doing well there.
