The match was arranged by sports betting firm Sportpesa which had earlier organized a rapidly executed knock out tourney to pick the side that was to play Everton, and the Kenyan champs won the tourney. This was the first aspect of the memorable visit, where a neighbouring champion club plays a visiting England premier league side before a capacity city crowd.
Failure to secure a leading local club to meet Everton may have cut into potential earnings of the soccer federation now in the throes of an election disputed by the world governing body, along with other local stakeholders.
Gate fees were fairly low, some would even say abysmally low, but as it wasn’t possible to factor local rivalries in the visit, the best way to honor the visit as well as doing justice to the sponsors was to place a decidedly affordable fee both popular stand seats as well as VIP section, priced at 3,000/- and 8,000/- per seat.
That was way out of the ordinary as top level matches at the stadium don’t cost as little as that, even in the best of days.
At the same time, the visit to Tanzania also provided the first occasion for England legend Wayne Rooney to play his first match for his boyhood club which he left for Manchester United 13 years ago, scoring his first goal for the side in the match. The goal was a casually taken 35 meter drive that the Gor Mahia goalie failed to stop, with the Everton FC striker having figured out what would happen from that position.
Despite that a Gor player headed home beautifully sooner than later, it was Rooney’s goal that was the talk of town. When else did a player go back to a boyhood club after an illustrious career at a top level club, and score the first goal in Africa?
It means that the all time top scorer in both Manchester United FC and England will have the Tanzanian visit indelibly written into his memory, as the solid moment of his return to Everton FC, and so will scores of his fans both in “England and overseas.
Whether it will be the goal itself or the venue, or indeed who were his opponents, the visit becomes part of legend, which the next generation of those who are now toddlers or kindergarten will be told when they grow up, as soccer pundits of another generation avidly recall those touching moments. That is how history is made, by a set of coordinated and chancy decisions, by Sportpesa and Wayne Rooney in terms of what each decided to do, and then fate did the rest with the memorable long volley.
As if this touchline with history wasn’t, Sportpesa and Everton FC had also linked up with Mbwana Samatta and local albino societies where some events were arranged, including an exhibition match between Everton players and Albino United FC at the National Stadium, earlier.
That too was an awareness raising event of memorable parameters, as no such match has ever been organized in Dar es Salaam, thus the albino community obtained the sort of attention they deserve only with the visit and its charity connections. Suffice it is to say that the visit is the sort of stuff that legends are built upon; hopefully the spirit kindled will be maintained, grown.
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