History
The Rhino Football Club of Arusha moved to Mbeya City from August 2011 after being bought by the City Council and became known as the Mbeya City Council Football Club. The club has a proud tradition of being a people’s orientated club. The club and its volunteers work to get as many domestic players and fans as possible. Dedicated qualified and accredited domestic coaches, managers, first aid officers and administrators strive to give the club and players a positive experience and results.
Objectives
The general objective of the Mbeya City Council Football Club is the Development and Practice of football. This objective is defined through the following specific objectives:
- To explore and develop the football talent of young Tanzanians.
- To create and widening direct and indirect employment opportunities among the young players, technical personnel and other formal and informal sector practitioners in the country.
- To sensitize/stimulate the small and medium socio-economic activities among the small and medium entrepreneur through football activities.
Driving motives
The club is driven by motives to be a huge, strong and popular football team in the southern highland zone(Including Mbeya, Iringa, Rukwa and Ruvuma regions) and country wide.
Current position
The team played in the Tanzania Vodacom Premier league for the season 2013/2014; is one of the top three clubs in the league table.
The club continues to enjoy considerable growth and success as it grows in size, as do the costs of running the club. The aim is to provide the players with skills as much as possible without passing additional costs to the club.
Club income sources
The club is currently funded by Mbeya City Council as the owner of the team, TV rights from AZAM TV, Gate collections and VODACOM Tanzania as league sponsor. Lately the club got two years sponsorship from Bin Slum Company ltd commencing 2015/2015 season. Other sources like Merchandising, members' subscriptions and advertisements on the club website and club magazine are not functioning but procedures are on the way to make sure they work effectively.
Fanbase of the club
Mbeya City Council Football Club is the third premier league team in the country for having many spectators in various stadium behind Yanga and Simba. The club collected total of 183,101 spectators in thirteen first round premier league matches in home and away stadiums.
More than 16,000 fans have visited the club's Facebook page. The club fanbase will be widening after completing the club website and the process of transforming the club from the institutional base to public limited company.
Future plans
The club has identified short- and long-term future plans. These plans are divided into three main areas:
- Establishment of Mbeya City Council FC Television
Previously, Mbeya City Council used the domestic and international TV stations (e.g., ITV, TBC) to broadcast their programmes to the city’s populace. Currently the station is not functioning; the club plans to revive the station in order to broadcast the Club programmes related to football and other related issues.
- Construction of hostels and playing ground for training
The club has acquired a piece of land for infrastructure development Phase I, for the construction of a training ground for senior and junior teams, hostels with all necessary facilities for both senior and junior teams, offices for administration and technical bench. The size of acquired land is 57,000sqm plot No.236 BLOCK “E” Iwambi area Mbeya City. The MCC FC Infrastructure Development Plan Phase II will focus the construction of stadium “The Citizen Arena”.
- Club philosophy and vision
- Win the games with attractive football.
- The club motive is more important than the philosophy.
- The philosophy is more important than the team.
- The team is more important than the most important player.
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