Ninety minutes, not ninety posts: Tanzania clubs now face the real CAF test

DAR ES SALAAM: BRING the tea, dust off the good cup, and if you are Simba, perhaps add an extra spoonful of honey because seven goals over two legs are not collected from a supermarket shelf during your lunch break. If you are Singida Black Stars, you may even be forgiven for planning meat for Sunday, actual meat, after that extraordinary 10–1 aggregate demolition of Al-Ghazala Wau. Yanga supporters can settle into their chairs with satisfying sighs after surviving Gaborone United 3–2 on aggregate.

Azam, our distinguished gentlemen from Chamazi, were sipping cool drinks in the executive lounge, receiving a bye like lottery winners who did not even buy a ticket. Tanzania therefore arrives at the CAF group stages with all four Mainland representatives still vertical, still breathing, still conscious. And judging by social media, they are already measuring the living room for trophy display cases that probably won’t fit through the door.

And that, dear football congregation, is precisely where we must gently apply the brakes before the Taifa Stars bus, four club buses, approximately seventeen million online commentators and several prophets claiming divine visions all disappear together into a rather spectacular ditch. Football is still played on a field, you see. It has not yet been officially transferred to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, or those magical WhatsApp groups where one victory over a preliminary-round opponent somehow becomes scientific proof that the trophies are in the bag.

Spend half an hour browsing Tanzanian football social media, and you may genuinely conclude that CAF has cancelled the remaining competition and decided that Simba and Yanga should contest the Champions League final while Azam and Singida settle their personal differences in the Confederation Cup. The excitement, however, is almost understandable because the opening numbers are genuinely handsome, if you squint and ignore the upcoming four rounds of football. Simba waltzed into Malawi and humiliated Mighty Wanderers 1–0, then returned home to administer a 6–1 Sunday afternoon examination so thorough that someone probably checked for administrative errors.

Singida Black Stars were even more extravagant, winning 7–1 away in a performance that would make any European coach weep with envy.