Ex-Simba foward Paul Kiongera makes his waypast a defender during a past Premier League match.
What you need to know:
We say lately because seven seasons ago every top club in Tanzania had a Kenyan player and they all performed well. That trend seems to be a thing of the past.
Dar es Salaam. There has been a worrying trend lately where Kenyan players just can’t seem to perform well in the Tanzanian Premier League.
We say lately because seven seasons ago every top club in Tanzania had a Kenyan player and they all performed well. That trend seems to be a thing of the past.
Boniface Ambani once topped the scoring charts while playing for Young Africans where he scored 25 goals in one season, a mark which no Yanga player has managed to beat for a good eight seasons.
During that same time Maurice Sunguti worked wonders at the Jangwani outfit where other Kenyan players, including Bernard Mwalala, John Baraza, Mike Barasa, Edwin Mkenya, Pascal Ochieng and Joseph Shikokoti all had relative success.
The same thing can be said at Mainland giants Simba. Kenyan players have come and gone and they did many good and memorable things.
No Simba fan can forget Hillary Echesa and Mark Sirengo, two Kenyan players who scored vital winning goals in the biggest derby of them all against Yanga and they also won titles with the Msimbazi giants.
Downward Trend
Of late though, Kenyan players have found the going getting tough and the opinion of many fans is that they simply fail to get tough with the going.
That seems to be a rather unfair conclusion to the reality when you look deeply into what happened to the likes of Paul Kiongera, Humphrey Mieno, Joakins Atudo, Osborne Monday and the rest who failed to shine.
Kiongera for instance was unfortunate to sustain a bad injury on his league debut last season in the very first match of the season where Simba played Coastal Union.
Modo came on as a sub with 20 minutes to play and he spent only 5 minutes on the field where an attempt on goal was met by a challenge from Coastal Union keeper Shabaan Kado and was stretchered off the field with diagnosis later on showing he picked a serious knee injury that ruled him out for 4 months.
Injuries
It can generally be claimed that had injury not struck Modo he was destined for big things with Simba, his performances at Gor Mahia and KCB enough testament to that fact.
The same injury jinx cursed the likes of Atudo and Mieno who had otherwise quite impressive a spell during their time at the Chamazi rich boys of Tanzanian football.
When you factor the bad season that former two-time KPL top scorer Ugandan Striker Danny Serunkumma had with Simba it would seem that there is a real problem with players from Kenya in the Tanzanian League.
Rama Salim was an exception having been one of the few bright lights in an otherwise mediocre season that coastal Union had.
The former Gor Mahia forward lighted up the league with beautiful goals which amounted to a tally of seven which is not so bad for a player in their first season in a mid-table team.
Juju, Black Magic, Urogi?
You won’t ever avoid this little matter of Black magic anywhere that African football is concerned and if you speak with the few Kenyan players that have passed in the Tanzanian league in recent seasons they will cry foul.
Numerous claims have hit different news sources from Kenyan players who accuse their Tanzanian counterparts of fixing them so that they can fail to nail a position in the starting XI.
No research would be able to give us a valid amount of data that would lead to a conclusion of true or false when it comes to juju because they say it takes a witch to know one. However, ask yourself this; did this Juju not exist where Rama Salim, Ambani, Sunguti, Sirengo and Mwalala thrived?
The answer to this question is hard to give out, but it’s not difficult to see where this is going to.
Failing to adopt, tactical reasons, pure bad luck?
In football there is a relative amount of luck that is needed even though the gospel preached is talent which is supposed to be married to a lot of hard work. It can be claimed that a bad coincidence of bad luck may have befallen these few Kenyan players in Tanzanian teams.
The talent is obviously there and that’s why teams pay huge amounts of money to sign them but sometimes things just don’t work as the case is in other facets of life where things aren’t always as rosy as we want them to.
Another reason can be the failure to adopt to new team surroundings, tactics and an uneasy relationship with team mates. There have been many cases where rifts between players occur and sometimes they just don’t click; either the lifestyle variations become too obvious that intermingling becomes a problem or personalities just don’t gel.
Nothing wrong with Kenyan Players
When you look at the number of players who have succeeded, it is obviously higher than those that have failed to shine and there have been many cases where players rediscover their form immediately after changing teams and going back home.
We can even go back to Ugandan players and you will find out that not all of them have had it all going their way. Brian Umony for example had a spell to forget with Azam, he however rediscovered his good form when he went back home and signed for KCC.
It is nothing but a mere coincidence that things have lately not been good for Kenyan players in the Tanzanian league and there is nothing to suggest that it is either a problem with Kenyan players or Tanzanian teams that they play for. (Soka.co.ke).
