AfricaPress-Tanzania: SIMBA have expressed their readiness to resume the Mainland Premier League challenge, while announcing that one of their foreign players is expected to jet back in the country tomorrow.
Providing feedback and update of what is happening at the club, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Senzo Mazingisa said Simba is ready and excited ahead of the league restart.
Speaking live through Simba U-Tube channel, Mazingisa said; “Most of you must be familiar that football will return from June 1st this year as announced by the government. We have been in the dark since suspension of sports activities some eight weeks ago…we could not move but things are opening up.
“We had one or two sessions with the team and things have continued well on the background. We met with the technical team this week, so the plan is that after Eid celebrations the squad will resume training on Wednesday, by that time, we expect that most of our players will be there and most of the directives from the football and health authorities as well as the government will be in place on what is needed to be done,” he said.
Highlighting on the absence of four foreign players, who left the country mid- March this year to join their respective national teams for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), qualifiers matches before it was suspended by the Confederation of African Football (CAF), due to Coronavirus pandemic, Mazingisa said the club is making efforts for them to jet back.
He mentioned the players as Francis Kahata (Kenya), Meddie Kagere (Rwanda), Sharraf Shiboub (Sudan) and Clatous Chama of Zambia “Most of our players left the country to join their respective national teams but out of the four players, who are outside the country, one of them will be back in the country by Monday (tomorrow),” he said, without naming the player.
“Since the time of the lockdown our players have been keeping fit and have been keeping themselves busy. And, in the last three weeks we have been in contact with all of our players”.
“We are taking it very seriously so as to compete effectively in the remaining league matches so that we win the third league title on the trot.”
About recruitment of new players, Mazingisa said the focus of the club currently is to finish the league and win the title.
“We still have the FA Cup (Azam Sports Federation Cup), that we need to focus on. We know pressure is mounting on who Simba have registered; We want to calm our fans down and say to them that we are focusing on finalising and winning the league and qualify for CAF Champions League.
“There is some movement about the existing players that we have in the squad whose contracts are coming to an end. We are almost done with some of them and we will make an announcement soon,” he said, calling on fans to give them chance to finish the exercise and they will announce it as soon after concluding everything.
About new registration of players coming in the squad, Mazingisa said they will make big announcement as well soon.
On his part the club’s Head of Communication Department, Haji Manara also said for the past few months, they have been receiving a lot of messages and phone calls from agents and players who are eager to join the club.
He also insisted that the club is currently focused on winning double titles—league and Azam Sports federation Cup (ASFC). Meanwhile, Simba launched a new website www.simbasc.co.tz on Saturday.
Manara said the website production started way back in January this year. He said one of the major objectives is to ensure the public get access to all reports about the club.
“It also contains the history of the club, total titles won by Simba and all other statistics about the club. New updates will be posted frequently in both Kiswahili and English,” he said.
Speaking about the new website, Mazingisa said; “Today is a historic moment for our club. It is a very important milestone. This type of website that Simba has launched today (yesterday) is of the best quality, where fans can have access to Simba TV. When someone is sitting in Cairo (Egypt), want to know anything about Simba, he/she just needs to log in to get all the information about this wonderful club.”
“This is a big club in East Africa and this website of ours will give in-depth information about who we are. I’m very proud of the team that has been working behind the scenes to make sure this happens,” said the South African sports administrator.
