CURRENT player registration efforts ahead of the Mainland Tanzania Premier League restart, slated for early September, show that a new spirit is creeping into local football that was either not evident or too shy in the past two seasons at most.

In an earlier period, it was virtually unthinkable that the vision of the principal soccer sides that the country offers was to attain the Group Stage in the Champions League of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), but soon this horizon was no longer sufficient for local fans.

Not much has been said as to what led to the change, but it appears that repeated exposure and visible improvements led to greater ambition.

While the fans are widely – even wildly – excited about the pace and choice of registrations, it is something of a surprise that seemingly has less to do with fore planning than with momentary push, even as plans to excel in both tournaments, the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup, has always been with the city rivals’ main sponsors.

For one thing, the team that appears to have done better in the past year was somewhat less ambitious at the beginning of the last season than the one which finally came out as a sort of underdog, as none of this has been demonstrated.

Young Africans SC leaders are often shy of spelling out continental ambitions even after reaching the CAF Confederation Cup final the year before, while Simba SC was more emphatic at the start of the season that the club’s ultimate aim is to win the CAF Champions League.

Even as the club's honorary president and, whatever the case, principal sponsor was making this affirmation, technically the club was rebuilding its squad, or team properly speaking, but that was slightly timid, given the scale of achievement during the season.

A team that reaches the final of the CAF Confederation Cup, sweeping aside the likes of Al Masry of Egypt and Stellenbosch of South Africa, is a team that knows its way around, or it may arguably be described as a great experimental side seeking to find its feet, or how deep it can go in tournament waters.

It equaled the rivals’ (Yanga) record in that area, though their results with other opponents, when it thrust itself to the CAF Confederation Cup final, were somewhat brighter than the past season finale.

In all appearances, a rather unforgiving atmosphere among fans of the latest CAF Confederation Cup finalists was unwarranted, as reaching the continental tournament final is not a mean achievement, even without considering the scale of defeat, as it was itself marginally convincing.

 The victorious contenders, Morocco's RS Berkane, won convincingly at 2-0 against the visiting side, Simba SC, but didn’t repeat the feat in the return encounter, in which the virtually assured visitors put in a show of technique verging on defiance, to obtain a one-all draw, far from the 3-0 win for the home team that was needed for them to lift the title on home ground, the only factual advantage they had on that day.

What set the pace for a particularly agonizing end-of-season atmosphere for Simba SC was the fact of having lost three potential season titles in the space of either two or three weeks.

First, it was a loss at the semi-final stage of the FA Cup (or Federation Cup) to Singida Black Stars, then losing the CAF Confederation Cup final (on aggregate) to RS Berkane, and then losing the derby with their age-old rivals at the end of the street.

There is a way in which the Msimbazi Street side would have been able to live with the first two results had they won the last, failure to which opened one Pandora’s Box.

It paved the way for classifying – not just describing – the season as a disaster, even though to an extent it was a sort of whisker virtually on each occasion, but the complaints were not misplaced, as a soccer side does not lose thrice in three title-contending epic matches without weaknesses, not just temporary circumstance around either this or that match.

That is what the fans’ senses and it is what pushed club sentiments to a particular high, as if with the aid of either energetic drinks or other formulas, vastly exaggerating the extent to which the side had failed not just in the season but for the entire leadership of club Chairman, Murtaza Mangungu.

An exaggeration it was indeed, but what could one say if that was the fifth consecutive defeat at the hands of their bitterest rivals?

In that case, no criticism can be leveled at the fan base especially for wrenching disappointment with the way the season ended, and while their mentality was to seek the head of the club chairman for failing to fulfill his promise of defeating the age-old rivals, it was clear someone else needed to cleanse his image as a sponsor, or investor as club intrigue would insist.

There was a need for billionaire, Mohamed Dewji 'Mo', to show that he can equal, or surpass, the team building work of his alter ego at GSM, whose firm finances Yanga, at once the name of a company and an individual holding all the apron strings of what happens at the Jangwani Street side.

It was a contest of registration of players and finding the best coaches around.

The work was ongoing, as Yanga has four coaches in succession within a season, a not-so-habitual feat showing the intensity of contention, now reaching its epic climax.