WHEN the Chan soccer tournament was launched a few years ago, the objective was to cater, specifically, for African players who were not, in any way, professional soccer players.
Simply put, the objective of Chan is to help African amateur footballers to showcase their talent in the continental and global perform so that they too could be picked to join the elite league of professional soccer players.
Since most amateur African soccer players could not play for their respective African teams on account of the dominance, in such teams, by professional players, the Cairo based Confederation of African Football (CAF) felt that the only way of providing opportunity to such hapless African players was to devise a tournament that would take care of such players.
But no sooner had Chan been launched than it became clear that the hapless African players would continue to be sidelined as long as he is a product of haphazard soccer production line. This explains why Tanzania has once again failed to qualify for the on-going Chan tournament which is being hosted by Morocco.
Interestingly, a glance at the on-going Chan soccer tournament shows that all the four groups are being led more or less by the same countries that dominate Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) soccer tournaments. For instance, until Monday this week, Group A was being led by Morocco which had bagged in three points, followed by Sudan, Guinea and Mauritania.
Group B was being led by Zambia which had also bagged in three points, followed by Namibia, Ivory Coast and Uganda. And Group C was being led by Libya which had also bagged in three points followed by Nigeria, Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea.
I have omitted Group D which has Cameroon at the top followed by Burkina Faso, Congo Brazzaville and Angola because their logs are empty in the sense that they don’t seem to have played any matches. But if you look, critically, Groups A, B and C which are led by Morocco, Zambia and Libya followed closely by Sudan, Namibia and Nigeria, you would realize that the six teams cannot be compared say with Tanzania.
Take Zambia and Nigeria as a case in point. The two are former Afcon champions. Namibia surprised soccer fraternity when they edged out Ivory Coast by a lone goal in a match they played on Monday night. Namibia would not have beaten Ivory Coast if they had not changed the way they prepared their players, namely, by going through the soccer academy way.
The same thing could be more or less said about Group C leaders, Libya. After being dominated for years by Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, Libya finally decided to emulate the four above countries by embarking on the soccer academy path.
The Libyans have brought themselves to a point where their match against Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco or Egypt is somewhat unpredictable. And this is what Tanzania also need to do if they want to participate in Chan finals, they need to change, as I have repeatedly said in these columns, the way they get their players.
As long as they continue to rely on players who learnt their soccer skills in the streets rather than in the precinct of soccer academies, they will sooner than later be completely locked out of Chan, Afcon and Fifa World Cup finals.
The point is, if we thought that it would be easy for Tanzania to play in Chan finals simply because the tournament is designed for African amateur soccer players, then we are utterly wrong! The latest entry into soccer leadership by Zambia, in the on-going Chan tournament, has been brought about by the fact that the same team has played in last year’s U-20 Fifa World Cup finals.
Although the Zambians were later knocked out of the tournament; but the fact that the same team had been playing in the global soccer tournament since they were U-17, just goes to show how serious the Zambian governing soccer body has been in preparing its future players for the national soccer team, Chipolopolo.
After using both U-17 and U-20, the Zambian football federation has finally thrown part of the U-20 soccer players who had not managed to get professional clubs in Africa and outside the continent in order to sharpen their skills in readiness for the Chipolopolo senior team.
And that’s how you build a future team. You firstly prepare your players through soccer academies after which you later get them into taking part in the continental U-17 before moving on to the U-20 and later U-21. In conclusion, Tanzania should simply forget about taking part in Chan finals as long as they ignore establishment of scientifically organised and run soccer academies.
All countries which have decided to establish soccer academies like Namibia and Rwanda, countries we used to pump them with as many goals as we liked, have suddenly changed. All of a sudden, we have come to realize that they are no longer in the same level we had shared with them barely a few years ago. They have now become a class of their own.
