Go on Tanzania, bring home BSAFCON title

TANZANIAN flag is ready to fly high during the 2024 Africa Beach Soccer Cup of Nations (BSAFCON) finals scheduled at Hurghada in Egypt from tomorrow up to October 26th.

Eight national beach soccer teams from the continent will be busy exchanging tackles on sandy pitch battling hard to lift high the lucrative BSAFCON title at the end of the tournament.

Tanzania is placed in Group A alongside hosts Egypt, Morocco and Ghana, a group that has already been described as a ‘group of death’ by beach soccer fraternity, as it consists of teams that have invested much in the game.

The country’s envoys will launch their Group A mission by taking on Morocco tomorrow, while hosts Egypt will face Ghana; both games are in Group A.

The next fixture for Tanzania falls on October 21st when they will play Egypt and their last group stage assignment will be on October 22nd against Ghana. If the envoys succeed to collect maximum points from these matches, they will proceed to the semi-finals, which is the main objective of the team’s Head Coach, Jaruph Juma.

“We are thankful to God that we have arrived here safely and all my players are in good health looking forward to compete and ensuring that they represent well our country.

“Arriving here early is another indicator that we really want to achieve a lot from this tournament since players will easily adapt the atmosphere available here,” Juma said after landing in Egypt on Wednesday morning. Commenting on their inaugural encounter against Morocco tomorrow, he said it is a crucial game as it will help to give them a clear picture of the entire tournament.

“We are aware that our opponents are also planning to get the better of us but the most important thing is to respect our game plan while aiming to get positive results from them.

“The squad has no injury concerns and we pray that the status of the players remains the same in order to have a good performance throughout the contest,” he said.

He added that taking part in the Beach Soccer Casablanca Cup 2024 that was held recently in Morocco helped them a lot in terms of boosting the team’s performance.

“We played against competitive teams like Morocco, Belgium and France…we managed to gather a lot of important lessons which will help us during the BSAFCON finals. “Though the results were not good to us, the most important thing is that we were able to asses ourselves through knowing our strengths and weaknesses so that we should be fully prepared,” he said.

In Group B, competing teams are Senegal, Mozambique, Malawi and Mauritania, a group that is also composed of competitive teams, with Senegal the most successful team, having clinched seven BSAFCON trophies. Also, Senegal are the defending champions of the contest so they are set to try defend it for a record of eight times, but that will only be achieved if they succeed to clear hurdles of their opponents.

Nigeria are the second successful team after claiming two BSAFCON titles, while Cameroon and Madagascar have just bagged one title apiece. Meanwhile, BSAFCON also act as a qualification route for the 2025 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup whereby two finalists will automatically qualify for the world cup showpiece. Seychelles already won the rights to host next year’s Beach Soccer World Cup and they earned direct qualification for being the hosting side.

Tanzania and Morocco qualified for BSAFCON finals on walkover after their opponents in qualifiers phase Uganda and Angola withdrew from contesting due to various reasons.

In 2021 BSAFCON finals, Tanzania were placed in group A together with Senegal, Ghana and DR Congo but the latter withdrew as such, each team played only two games and Tanzania finished at the base of the table win-less and point-less.