AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE influx of foreign based goalkeepers in the country has been labelled as a challenge to domestic shot stoppers for them to scale up their efforts and be reliable in their respective teams.
This was said yesterday by Young Africans goalkeeping coach Peter Manyika, who insisted that Tanzania has talented goalkeepers, who only need proper training and instill confidence in them.
“Sometimes, the nature of our teams tends to demoralise our goalies because they prefer to sign shot stoppers from outside the country, whose abilities are almost equal to our own players.
“In a view of this, it happens that a team can hire the services of a foreign based goalkeeper and upon arriving at the concerned club, he can end up being on the bench in most matches due to stiff competitions from the domestic ones hence, we just need to improve our own talented goalkeepers,” Manyika said.
Comparing the current goalkeeping situation to his old days when he was among the best shot stoppers in the country, Manyika said there was a huge difference between the two periods.
“In those days, I can say it was neither easy nor difficult to be the best goalkeeper.
We had no goalkeeping coaches like nowadays as such; we had to train by ourselves on how to be perfect in between the posts.
“The competition was seen during games and between the goalkeepers of both teams.
If your opponent makes two important saves, it was your task to ensure that you make at least three equal saves to silence him unlike these days, whereby most keepers lack self-confidence,” he said.
He continued that despite the presence of goalkeeper trainers, some of them (goalkeepers) still have no courage to grasp what they are being told to be applied during matches, a situation he said lead them to concede silly goals.
“With the availability of goalkeeping tips in YouTube and other platforms, some goalkeepers prefer to apply such skills during their training sessions without knowing that they need to learn what correspond to the league they play,” he said.
Another former decorated shot stopper in the country Idd Pazi attacked some goalkeeping coaches in the top flight league as not that competent, leading to the poor performance by the domestic goalies.
“We lack quality trainers of goalkeepers as such, we end up seeking services of foreign based shot stoppers, which is not healthy for our football development,” the ex-Taifa Stars and Simba SC goalkeeper noted.
