Fadlu Davids is the new head coach of Young Africans, the Tanzanian club confirmed on Friday evening. The former Simba SC and Raja Casablanca coach succeeds Manqoba Mngqithi, the club’s former coach, with a five-point gap to Simba.
“Karibu Young Africans SC, Fadlu Davids”. With this welcome message, the Tanzanian club made the arrival of the coach on its bench official on Friday evening, reports All Football. He succeeds his compatriot Manqoba Mngqithi in a team that needs to get back up to speed in the league.
For Davids, this return to Tanzania is nothing new: he has already managed Simba SC, the rival, before joining Raja Casablanca in Morocco. He now takes the reins at Young Africans, commonly known as Yanga.
A call from the president and a project
According to All Football, it was president Hersi Said himself who phoned the coach to set out the club’s project. The message is simple: Yanga have enjoyed domestic success over the past five years and want a rebuild to keep them at that level.
The new coach makes no secret of his pleasure at returning to the country. “I feel happy. I feel Tanzania is home. The people of Tanzania have always welcomed me, showed me love. And very good to be back to join this big club”, he said, again according to All Football.
Five points behind Simba
Davids’s first task is clear-cut: close the gap on Simba, coached by Steve Barker, who are five points clear after ten matchdays. A cushion the new coach will have to chip away at match by match, starting with Yanga’s next fixture, which will be played with that same deficit.
At the end of October, on Metro FM, Manqoba Mngqithi had said it was normal at Yanga for a player to miss training with few sanctions, judging that this “fundamentally destroys the club”. Those remarks, reported by All Football, give a measure of the task left by his predecessor.
Tanzania as familiar ground
Davids therefore returns to an environment he knows, after his spell on the Simba SC bench and then his experience at Raja Casablanca in Morocco.
The club had initially seemed set to appoint former TS Galaxy coach Sead Ramovic, but the deal reportedly fell through for family reasons, according to unverified reports. Friday’s official confirmation closed the matter.