AfricaPress-Tanzania: AZAM FC has announced that they will resume the remaining league matches with their players who are present in the country as most of their foreign based stars are still in total lockdown in their respective nations.
Azam are without seven key players plus coaches, who left the country immediately after the government announced suspension of all sport activities as among preventive measures to avoid the spread of Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking on Saturday, the club’s Information Officer, Thabit Zakaria said for now, it is impossible to get them back timely to start preparations to wind up the season.
“We are unable to facilitate the travel logistics for our players who are in Ghana, Uganda and Zimbabwe due to lockdowns imposed by these countries as such, international air transport are still prohibited.
“This means that if the top flight league restarts soon, we will not have them on board hence we will have to use the available players. Even our Head Coach, Aristica Cioaba, who is in Romania, cannot return back in time.
“We have managed to initiate the return of the Assistant Coach Vivier Bahati from Burundi tomorrow (today), who will travel by road as a result of air transport restrictions in his country…when he will reach Tanzania soil preferably in Kigoma, he will then board a plane.
“Bahati will then act as the Head Coach upon league resumption but he will be getting directives from Cioaba,” Zakaria said.
Azam have three players from Ghana (Razack Abalora, Daniel Amoa and Yacub Mohamed), one player from Uganda (Nicholas Wadada) and three players from Zimbabwe (Never Tigere, Bruce Kangwa and Donald Ngoma), who will have to wait a bit longer before returning into the country.
In another development, Zakaria revealed that his club has wholeheartedly welcomed government decision to choose Azam Complex as one of the venues to host the remaining top flight encounters.
“It is a big honour for us and we have just completed maintenance on the pitch to make it even better than ever before,” said he.
He added that all uplifting works at their arena will be 100 percent complete by June 1st hence ready to be used for any game, while insisting that they will have to make sure that they do well in their upcoming matches.
Azam are second on the league table with 54 points, 17 points behind leaders Simba SC, who have maximised 71 points to sit comfortably at the top of the pile.
