This week I met Paul Mitchell, who is a football Agent with Siyavuma Sports Group, based in South Africa. He has lived and worked in Tanzania and has very good experience in Tanzanian football dealing with the clubs and the Football Federation. Paul was in London for a business trip and I met him at the Emirates stadium and asked him some questions about Tanzanian players and the CHAN tournament which was supposed to be held in Kenya. Below are the questions I asked Paul:
1.Paul, you have been working in Tanzania before moving to South Africa. What do you see as being the key issues with Tanzania football in terms of the players?
2.Players between the ages of 6-13 in Africa are usually at the same level in terms of ability, they all have similar qualities in terms of physique, technique and passion for football. What do you think are the challenges of young Tanzanian players therefore?
3.So far we have only one good Tanzanian player playing in Europe, Mbwana Samatta, playing in the major league in Belgium. Why do you think we only have one Tanzanian player in Europe out of a population of 52m?
4.Who do you think might be the next player who will take over from Mbwana Samatta?
5.Kenya lost the opportunity to be the host of CHAN the reason being that the infrastructure was not ready and there were also the political unrest due to the election. What do you see as being the impact of East Africa losing out on this opportunity?
