AfricaPress-Tanzania: FORMER Simba SC midfielder, James Kotei said he still miss passionate fans at the club but could neither accept nor deny coming back to play in the country next season.
The Ghanaian holding midfielder had a successful period with the Msimbazi Street based giants helping them a lot in both Mainland Premier League games and CAF Champions League encounters before the two sides went separate ways last season.
Speaking via a telephone interview from Belarus recently, Kotei said he still remembers playing behind 60,000 packed National Stadium with fans coming from all corners of the country, saying he has missed that love a lot.
“I respect Simba fans a lot. They are in my blood. I love them and they love me too. Just want to wish them well but nobody knows about the future,” Kotei said.
He added that Tanzania is a nice country and that the passionate love that its people have towards football is what makes them unique to other parts of the world as far as the beautiful game of football is concerned.
“Some people considers Tanzania league as of low quality but when I went to play in South Africa, I realised that in Tanzania, their league is not low as many people think only that there are minor things which needs to be addressed there. In South Africa, the coverage of their league is big but not its quality,” he said.
Asked to comment on the wage cut imposed to some professional players in the world as a means for clubs to sustain during the ongoing coronavirus scourge, Kotei said some players do have big salaries such that even if they deduct a certain per cent, they cannot be highly affected.
“We are all humans and if they will come up with that procedure to cut off our salaries for maybe two months, we can consider that because football is on pause, meaning that no revenue is being generated. “The virus has seriously affected us (players) because we no longer do our usual training sessions and as such, the performance can easily drop since most of the time, you remain indoors with minimal exercises,” he said.
Kotei has frequently been linked to return to Simba and their traditional rivals Young Africans.
In his 75 matches he played for Simba after joining them in 2016, Kotei scored only one goal but orchestrated many goals no wonder he w a s named the engine of the team.
As the top flight l e a g u e remain paused, Simba lead the log with 71 points from 28 games, while Azam FC sit second on the table with 54 points from 28 out- ings as Yanga occupies third place with 51 points from 27 outings.
Debutants Namungo FC a r e fourth on the ladder with 50 points from 28 matches, while Coastal Union fills up the fifth place with 4 6 points after 28 games as well.
