TFF, catalyst for women football rise
THE evolution of women’s football in the country deserves massive applaud as a lot is being done to ensure that more women venture into this sport not for fame, but rather as part of managing their lives.
The awareness of women to play football is growing day by day unlike in the past, when this beautiful sport in the world was being dominated by males.
Nowadays, it is encouraging to see that Tanzanian women football teams are competing well in both domestic and international events through winning titles in some of them.
Yes, this is what the country has been searching for a long time to see women actively engaging in football and let their talented legs speak volume for themselves.
All these positive transformations cannot go without a word of acknowledgement to the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF), who have been on the forefront in fuelling for the development of women football.
Numerous developmental programs are being conducted by the country’s football governing body to promote women football and the future looks bright.
For instance, in terms of exposure, the federation deserves kudos as they try their best to deploy the country’s envoys outside Tanzania for the sake of taking part in different competitive football events.
Currently, the Under-12 Girls’ team is in China featuring in the Universal Female Youth Cup which is a great platform for the young girls to embrace exposure.
In their first match against Indonesia, Tanzania won 7-0 and this significantly means that there is potential in investing in women’s football as positive results are being recorded wherever they go.
They also claimed an emphatic 10-0 victory over City Dream Under-12 in their second match of the competition and all these signifies that the young girls are having proper football fundamentals that enables them to do well.
The team’s coach Elieneza Nsanganzelu before travelling with the squad to China commented on the progress of nurturing women’s football in the country saying there are tremendous achievements.
“As a country, we are doing better in fostering for the development of this game in the country and the good thing is that the awareness of women themselves has improved.
“They are willingly coming to register to play football and most of them are very talented, hence, it gives us (coaches) a simple task of instilling tactical skills and discipline in them,” he said.
He added that aside of competing at the Universal Female Youth Cup, the young girls are set to gain experience from other teams that have also invested a lot in sharpening women’s football.
Also, the Under-17 Serengeti Girls team is currently in camp preparing for the U-17 Girls UNAF competition to be held in Tunisia from September 1st to 9th this year.
The Union of North Africa Football (UNAF) was launched in 2005 by the North African members of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) who are Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.
In this regard, Serengeti Girls are therefore set to gain a lot from their participation in UNAF Under-17 competition as they will play alongside teams that have done massive investment in women football.
The team (Serengeti Girls) is under the tutelage of Bakari Shime who is imparting the young girls with necessary tactical skills prior to their deployment to Tunisia for the contest of which the country’s envoys have been invited.
“We are honoured to play in the upcoming UNAF contest, the teams we will face there are very competitive and will give us a good test of our young players who needs such strong teams to make them mature,” Shime said.
Indeed, football is all about exposure…you need to go out of your comfort zone and play against other teams and in such doing, you learn a lot from them even though you might be able to outclass them.
Similarly, one cannot comment about the growth of women football without touching on Tanzania Women’s Premier League which is also playing a critical role in exposing talented women footballers.
