AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE nation stadium is now renamed Mkapa to honour the former President Benjamin William Mkapa who was laid to rest at Lupaso in Mtwara on Wednesday.
The renaming of the stadium came a few days after Mbwana Samatta, the best product of the stadium, helped his English Premier League team, Aston Villa to survive relegation.
We are all delighted to see the stadium renamed after Mkapa, but to honour him effectively, we would urge sports personalities to work hard to enable Tanzania produce more sportsmen or women of Samatta calibre.
At the moment, Samatta is not only the first Tanzanian soccer player to play and score in the UEFA Champions League besides being the first Tanzanian football player to play in the English Premier League, which many soccer pundits believe to be the best league in the World.
As it is named Mkapa, it means also the whole Tanzania, therefore our players need to know that you can become what you want to be in life but if you have the right attitudes.
Right attitudes guide you to get what you want. Wishing alone is however, not enough; because as they say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride them.
Therefore, in order to succeed, a player who wants to get into top professional soccer ranks need to have the right attitudes.
Samatta needs to look further than playing or just scoring for Aston Villa he should work extra hard to make his success inspire more Tanzania to join his ranks.
From what we witnessed during his debut for Aston Villa, he has unmistakably inspired many Tanzanian youths to follow his suit and only through sheer hard work, determination and dedication, their dreams can be attainable.
It is heartwarming that to date many Tanzanians have taken keen interest in Aston Villa, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of them have been supporting Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool.
Samatta becomes the second player from Tanzania Mainland Premier League to conquer global football arena after Nonda Shaabani.
It’s never too late for Tanzanians aspiring to be future Samattas as they should right now start to focus how to join their local hero in the tough race for global football conquest.
Those aspiring to be future global stars should clearly know by serving the big English Premier League side, Samatta has already laid a track- road for them when he said before going to England, not many people knew about Tanzanian football, but after that things have begun to change.
