THE PUB: Soccer season's over and sanity resumes

We’ve been having months of fun as our republic’s soccer teams battled for local and continental glory in the just-ended 2024/25 season.

Nerve-wrecking hopes, fears and anticipations for Bongo’s top-flight teams fighting to shine in football stadiums across the country.

Our largest sporting facility, the Benjamin Mkapa National Stadium, aka Kwa Mkapa, has a mere 30,000 capacity, yet Dar City alone has a population of around 6 million, the largest percentage of whom are soccer mad!

So, you could be sure TV ratings skyrocketed, with many activities being suspended as football fans followed the matches involving their favourite teams on the screens.

Radio listeners like my friend Joshua, the watchman in our neighbourhood’s heavy-duty vehicle garage, were into it too.

From his portable FM radio, Joshua followed the Premier League so keenly he could arrange and rearrange all the major teams’ First Eleven line-ups as if he were the coach for each and every one of them!

But he’s a Yanga fan to the hilt. Yanga lia-lia, we call his ilk.

As we all know, ours is a country in which you’re either a Yangan or a Simban.

If you say you don’t belong to either, you’re dismissed as a liar. And when you insist you’re club-less, we assign you one, upende-usipende!

The season was fun, generally. Much as there was pain for those whose team lost, more so when the losing—or poor showing—side was Simba or Yanga.

Like when Yanga fell 1-3 to Tabora United on November 7 last year!

Or when Simba drew 2-2 against the “lowly rated” Coastal Union!

Whenever Simba or Yanga failed to beat any of the other 14 PL teams, jeers would follow courtesy of the arch-rival with jibes like, “Hamna timu nyinyi!” You people have no team!

When on January 18 Yanga bowed out of the CAF Champions League after drawing with Algeria’s MC Alger, you should’ve seen Simba drinkers at Family Bar!

They jumped up like madmen in celebration… just imagine! But that’s us!

“Yanga hamna timu completely!” Ben, a senior barman and Simba side cheerleader, shouted at the blow of the final whistle.

And, when Simba fell with a 1-3 aggregate against Morocco’s Berkane (0-2 in Morocco and 1-1 in Zanzibar), it was time for Yangans to laugh! Insane!

All in all, we had an exciting period of time; yeah, those of us who love what Pele referred to as a beautiful sport.

For the crooked among us, the season provided a “legitimate” excuse to stay away from our usually difficult better halves.

We leave them to watch local soaps with their unconvincing storylines and the even-more-unconvincing soaps from Majuu featuring aliens who “speak” perfect Kiswahili. Ahem!

Young Africans, aka Yanga, aka Wananchi, aka Uto, clinched all the local trophies—five in total—to the chagrin of their watani, Simba. Congrats, Yanga.

Let’s all take a well-deserved break from the soccer madness as we pray that Simba finishes up the kujenga kikosi fiction ahead of the next season… so that they beat Yanga.