AfricaPress-Tanzania: MOST of foreign players serving Dar es Salaam football giants; Simba, Young Africans and Azam have arrived ahead of the Premier League on June 13th this year.
The players will also serve their teams during the Azam Sports Federation Cup (ASFC), whose quarter final matches will be staged on June 27th and 28th this year.
Among the notable arrivals include Simba’s hitman Meddie Kagere, who landed in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday last week while the latest arrivals include Francis Kahata of Simba and Young Africans goalie, Farouk Shikalo reported in Dar es Salaam late Satur- day.
Azam, who will face Simba in the Federation Cup’s quarter final, said its technical bench is totally impressed with the fitness levels of their players despite spending a long period without playing competitive football.
The club’s Information Officer, Thabit Zakaria, who said that after noting impressive fitness level of the players.
“It was easy for them (players) to be given training sessions and not fitness regain sessions.
About the fate of seven players who are yet to jet back and rejoin their colleagues ahead top flight league resumption on June 13th, Zakaria said they expect to welcome their three players from Zimbabwe and one player from Uganda soon.
“According to the infor- mation we have, Zimbabwe is expected to allow international flights from June 1st (today) hence we are putting measures to ensure that they should board the first flight to here,” he said.
Never Tigere, Bruce Kangwa and Donald Ngo- ma are Azam players expected to arrive back soon from Zimbabwe while Ugandan Nicholas Wadada is also said to be on standby to join his teammates.
On the other hand, Za- karia said they have succeeded to facilitate the return of their Head Coach, Aristica Cioaba who is expected to land into the country any moment from today.
The Romanian trainer was also a doubt to make it timely to join his team following travel restrictions imposed in his country due to Covid-19 pandemic.
Zakaria gave kudos to their representatives in Romania for getting the required documents to enable him fly back into the country.
“We have another good news because our coach is returning back despite the persistent lockdown procedures imposed in his nation.
This has been accelerated by our partners in Roma- nia,” said him.
Azam will face Simba in the quarterfinals of the Azam Sports Federation Cup (ASFC), in what has already been termed as the standing up fixture in the last eight of the contest.
Street tension prior to the game has begun among sport fans of the two teams bearing in mind that when the teams meet, neither side is given guarantee to win the encounter since it is always a 50-50 affair.
