Soccer talent scouting efforts still insufficient

Talent scouting and subsequent development has been at a very low key and completely lacks seriousness.
Talent is abundant among millions of youth scattered all over the country but the efforts to unearth and then develop remain a stumbling factor.

Both clubs and eventually the national teams bank heavily on players who have elevated themselves to the game, but not nurtured ones.

The demand for football excellence is huge by the entire football fraternity across the country. This can be proved and observed whenever clubs or national team performs poorly at international stages.

Fans reaction is highly conspicuous when they tend to turn out in big numbers at the National Stadium whenever their Stars side make a slight improvement. They also turn their back on the team when it performs dismally as big part of the stadium stands remain with empty seats.

The bottom line here is that the football federation which is entrusted to promote the game, is not doing enough. Even for the few talent scouted players, there is no long term plans to develop them into future stars.

Talent is thrown overboard every year and still TFF gives fans hope of making progression of their national soccer team to high levels.TFF fails to emulate those countries that we used to beat easily at qualifier series in the past, but now are our superiors when we compete with them.

We used to rub shoulders at par with countries like Zambia for instance, but now the Central African country has scaled football heights that we can hardly attempt to match.

Tanzania is struggling to beat even the East African neighbourhood, yet we field teams to battle for African Nations Cup qualifiers against those outside our football borders.

Domestic football talent scouting tournaments that unearthed the likes of Himid Mao, Farid Musa, Thomas Ulimwengu, Ame Zungu to mention a few, are not available at the needed frequencies nowadays. How would another batch of players be produced to replenish the expected void of the national teams?

We used to have Airtel Rising Stars and Copa-Coca-Cola supplementing to already established events like the UMISSETA and Uhai Youth Cup, but those firms behind these events have budget limitations as well.

The ‘Stars-Maboresho’ programme which TFF president Jamal Malinzi came up with it at the beginning of his football tenure in early 2014, has eventually collapsed and virtually buried. The president does not talk about it any more and probably there are no efforts to revive the mission as well.

Abundant talented youths have their skills being wasted as they lack assistance and corporate plans to venture into meaningful development.

Dependence on half-backed players from our premiership clubs will always cripple the national team if talents are not unearthed and developed with increased frequency. Big clubs like Yanga, Simba and Azam banks heavily on poaching and importation to boost their squads but not developing home-grown seeds of players.