Stars open camp ahead of friendly

Tanzania national soccer team, Taifa Stars, is expected to open a training camp in Dar es Salaam tomorrow gearing up for an international friendly against visiting South African team, Bafana Bafana.

The friendly will be played under floodlights at the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam on May 14 as the visitors have made reservations to fly in two days ahead of the encounter.

A contingent comprising 30 people including ten officials are due to arrive for the friendly, so says the Tanzania Football Federation’s information officer, Boniface Wambura.

This will be the second meting of the teams since they last played in the Castle Cup tourney in the previous decade.

Wambura said the highest entry fee for the match has been set up at 30,000/- for the VIP stand A and the lowest is 5,000 for the stands with seats coloured in orange, green and blue.

Otherwise, spectators wishing to occupy the VIP B and C stands would part with 20,000/- and 10,000/- respectively.

Other fans have to pay 7,000/- for the orange coloured seats stand overlooking the VIP stands on the eastern part of the stadium.

Stars players expected to join the training camp under assistant coach Silvestre Marsh are those who also travelled to Mozambique last week for a friendly against their hosts, which they lost by two goals.

This will be Stars second friendly in less than a month after the one against Mozambique.

The match would serve as the last build up ahead of the next month’s 2012 African nations Cup qualifier return leg tie against Central Africa Republic in Bangui.

The ad hoc prepared friendly will be without some of the export players as it does not fall under FIFA dates for international friendlies.

Stars head coach Jan Poulsen is bound to miss the match as the invitation to play the South African falls outside the soccer federation’s calendar.

By the time the invitation was extended, Poulsen had already left for a FIFA sanctioned seminar currently going on in Gambia.