TO accommodate a busy national schedule featuring the Mapinduzi Cup, CHAN preparations, and the CHAN tournament, the Tanzania Mainland Premier League has been paused until March 1, 2025.

This break allows for the Mapinduzi Cup to be played and for the Tanzania national team to train and compete in the CHAN tournament.

The Mapinduzi Cup will conclude on January 13, and three days later, on January 16, the national team's training camp for CHAN will begin. 

February is then dedicated to the CHAN tournament. Therefore, the Premier League season will resume on March 1.

The season typically ends in May or early June. This means we will have three months to ensure the season is completed. These months are March, April, and May. 

Now, consider this: there's the Mainland Premier League, which is currently in progress with over 250 matches still to be played. 

There's the Federation Cup, where only the first round has been completed. 

There is also the Tanzania Union Cup, which this time will feature eight teams. 

There are international matches, the FIFA calendar, and World Cup qualifiers. 

Finally, there are CAF interclub competitions, assuming Simba and Young Africans progress into the latter stages.

Can all of this be done within these three months? This is the basis of my argument that our league will become like the Egyptian league, which continues until August.

By the time the league was suspended, the entire first round had been completed, while some teams had already started the second round. 

On March 17 and 24, there will be World Cup qualifiers. Tanzania will have two matches: against the Republic of Congo on March 17 and against Morocco on March 24. 

Typically, we need at least a week-long training camp before these matches. Therefore, we can expect the Stars to enter camp from March 10. This means that only two rounds may have been played since the league resumed.

In the same month, there are bound to be matches for the second round of the Federation Cup, which will come after the national team matches. By then, the third month will be over.

In the fourth month, we expect the league to resume, a month that will also see the Union Cup. 

Preliminary information suggests that this time there will be four teams from the Mainland and four from Zanzibar, meaning there will be eight teams in total. 

Even if the matches are played in a knockout format, this competition cannot be completed in less than two weeks, especially if there are eight teams. Also, the Federation Cup will continue in the same month.

This means that in the four weeks of April, only one week might be dedicated to the Premier League. And if that's the case, it means the league won't even have reached round 20 by the end of April. 

We'll be left with only May, with over 200 matches still waiting to be played. It's impossible for all these matches to be played within May, or even June, no matter how much we rush. 

We should also remember that the Federation Cup will still not have reached the semi-final stage by then. And there are still the CAF interclub competitions if Simba and Young Africans progress far.

According to the League Board's position, as stated by its chief executive, Kasongo Almasi (pictured), the league will end in May. 

This means that when the schedule is released, it will have very tightly packed matches, possibly even three per week. 

This will help the board maintain their schedule, but it will kill the players' performance levels. 

There won't be time for the players to rest their bodies and recover. This is not a beneficial situation for football or for our players.

We all understand the circumstances that have caused this disruption. We don't directly blame the League Board. Therefore, there's no need for the board to go to extreme measures, to the point of causing hardship for the players, just to maintain the schedule. 

Let the league continue, even if it extends to October; we'll figure out what to do then, but let's not make the players suffer. 

Our country is geographically very large, and teams are spread across various regions. Scheduling matches every three days is a great hardship for players of teams that cannot afford to travel by air.

The League Board should calm down and create a schedule that allows players time to rest and recover after matches. 

This year, there will be AFCON in Morocco, and our national team relies on players who play in this league to participate in that tournament. 

If we subject them to a punishing schedule, we will exhaust them, and they won't be able to help us at AFCON. The loss will be our own. 

We should prepare to accept and acknowledge the possibility of the league finishing late, in order to reduce the pressure of creating a rushed and frantic schedule.