AfricaPress-Tanzania: SOME of the Mainland Premier League teams have already initiated procedures to bring back their foreign based players into the country to complete the remaining matches of the season.
This is a response after announcement by President John Magufuli that sport activities will be officially flagged off from June 1st this year.
Also, the president’s declaration that international flights will be allowed to land into the country at the end of this month will facilitate jetting in of the players, who went for holiday in their respective countries following suspension of sports activities as a measure to curb further spread of Covid-19 pandemic.
The resumption of the highly awaited Mainland Premier League will help a lot to know the real champions of the season, plus which teams will bid farewell to the league and those which will be promoted into the top flight next season.
Run away league leaders Simba have almost four players who are in their respective countries including the leading sorcerer Meddie Kagere (Rwanda), Clatous Chama (Zambia), Francis Kahata (Kenya) and Sharaf Shiboub (Sudan).
All these are key players for the Msimbazi Reds and the club needs to ensure that they do everything possible to facilitate their arrival back into the country.
On the other hand, Young Africans disclosed that they have also begun measures to bring back Head Coach Luc Eymael from Belgium as well as their Kenyan goalkeeper Farouk Shikhalo.
This was confirmed by the club’s Head of Information Department Hassan Bumbuli, who insisted that the management had made formal communication with the duo in a bid to arrange their air tickets.
Azam FC are the most affected as they have a total of seven key players outside the country as recently admitted by the club’s Information Officer Thabit Zakaria.
He said what interested them from the speech made by Magufuli was that of letting international air flights to resume their normal operations, saying seven of its foreign players will now fly back in the country easily to join their colleagues in winding up the remaining league fixtures.
“We have three players who are in Ghana (Razak Abalora, Daniel Amoa and Yakubu Mohamed), one player in Uganda (Nicholas Wadada) and three players in Zimbabwe (Never Tigere, Bruce Kangwa and Donald Ngoma), who will now be able to jet in when the suspension on international flights will be lifted,” he said.
Moreover, Zakaria said two coaches who are the Head Coach and fitness trainer are in Romania while the Assistant Coach is in Burundi, insisting that the announcement by Magufuli to let international flights land at the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) is good news for them.
“Our task as a club is football such that when the sport is absent, we feel as if we do no longer exist because our work is not being done hence we are all alert to see the footwork action restart on the battlefield,” he said.
