Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) and the Tanzania Premier League Board (TPLB), said they are making an internal logistics to facilitate possible resumption of football leagues in the country.

According to the statement made available yesterday by the federation’s Media and Information Officer, Clifford Ndimbo, the procedure will, however, highly depend on the directive from the government as to when, the leagues may restart.

“Currently, we are only engaged in an internal procedure as such; Our partners should continue with the initial precaution measures of avoiding public gatherings to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. “TFF and TPLB will disseminate further information as per recommendation by the government,” reads part of the statement.

Recently, TPLB set next month as the period when the league could possibly resume, depending on the recommendation by the government regarding the threat of Covid-19 pandemic.

This was said by the TPLB Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Almas Kasongo, while giving updates on the decision reached by the body’s management committee emergency meeting, which was convened by its Chairman, Stephen Mguto lately in Dar es Salaam.

“We had a fruitful meeting and managed to come up with two resolutions, which are to resume the league only when the government will declare safe to do so and that upon its resumption, the old system of playing home and away matches will be applied,” he said.

However, queried to mention the timeframe as to when the action will return on the battlefield, Kasongo replied that possibly early next month.Close

“As for now, we are in the process to write a proposal which will be shared with the TFF and the Ministry of Information, Culture, Arts and Sports on how we can safely restart the league”.

“Our focus is to ensure that when the games return, we should be able to give people quality football they have missed for at least two months,” the CEO said.

He also disclosed that TPLB has already started implementing the suggestion of President John Magufuli, who recently reiterated that he is just waiting for his advisors to brief him about possible resumption of the league.

“Let me take this opportunity to laud him (Magufuli) for showing his interest to bring back the game of football because sports help a lot to build people’s health and thereby remain resilient to diseases,” remarked Kasongo.

He also maintained his stand that upon the restart of the league, all remaining fixtures will unfold behind closed doors as one of the resolution made by TPLB, during their first meeting on March 18th this year.

“We will ensure that players, referees, members of the technical bench, leaders and few reporters who will get access into the stadium are thoroughly tested to curb further spread of the Covid-19.

“In the Mainland Premier League, there are 98 matches to be played while in the First Division League (FDL), we have 48 games on the card and again in the Second Division League (SDL), there is one more round to go of 10 matches which will also involve six playoffs before getting the required teams to be promoted,” he narrated.