Ensure Football Emerges Winner, KAMANGA Urges Councillors Ahead of This Saturday’s Elective AGM In Kabwe
Sporty salutations to you, our football family. This week is very crucial in redefining the course of our game as we go to the polls. We are hopeful that this election season will not drag on further as it is hurting our core football business. In a season, we should be celebrating our under-17 boys and girls qualifying to the FIFA World Cup and our under-20 lads in the thick of the Africa Cup of Nations, we seem to be turning football into a courtroom.
Clearly, there is a need to make the discourse football centered and not an opportunity to grandstand or pontificate about values you do not practice. Let us not forget that the call to service should be about growing the game and providing coherent programs that will see more national teams qualify to the FIFA World Cup and win trophies.
We should be talking about cascading national teams from the under-15 level to the u-13, 11 and 9 in the next development cycle. We have seen the monumental milestones that having an under-15 national team has done for our country resulting in all our under-17 teams qualifying to the world cup benefitting from a solid foundation at the junior level.
All these things will culminate into a strong senior national team in line with our 10-year strategic plan. The rise of the women’s game did not happen overnight, as we deliberately realigned the entire structure by investing more in grassroots development and quality coaching.
The challenge we face now is to sustain these monumental achievements that has seen the Copper Queens qualify to two Olympics (Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024), a historic FIFA World Cup appearance in 2023 (Australia& New Zealand), WAFCON third place finish (Morocco 2022) and the under-17 women qualifying back-to-back to the FIFA World Cup (Dominican Republic 2024 & Morocco 2025).
Like all models, our development approach has its limitations, but we have consistently refined it over time and remain confident that further improvements lie ahead. We are at a point of consolidating these gains and ensuring that we hit the highs the country desperately desires.
Finally, we urge all prospective candidates to maintain a civil discourse and ensure that their campaign messages are firmly-grounded in truth. Our message to the football family is to keep their eyes open and ensure that football ultimately emerges as the winner.
Our country will be welcoming a high-powered delegation from FIFA, CAF and Cosafa that have been magnanimous enough to return after the botched AGM in Livingstone on March 29. Our prayer is that our football will be spared the embarrassment of Livingstone that cast our game in a bad light. Have a productive week!
Source: FAZ PRESIDENT’S CORNER