By Puncherello Chama
WHY ZAMBIA CANT SIMPLY COPY CAPE VERDE ( THE OCEAN AND THE POND)
Watching the Wprld Cup, Cape Verde have emerged as one of the most impressive stories.
Drawing against Spain and Uruguay is not easy and shows that Cape Verde can match the top countries in the world.
Cape Verdes success has been met with pride among Africans but also uncomfortable questions have emerged among a number of fans whose countries failed to qualify.
One huge question is whether our football associations take football seriously.
Zambia is one of those countries where this question is being asked.
And the comparisons are on fans minds on what Cape Verde are doing that Zambia is failing to do.
1 CAPE VERDE HAVE BUILT SOMETHING THAT WORKS
Onw hugw talking point ariund Cape Verde is how they have succesfully tapped into thier diaspora.
Majority of thier players are found in Portugal, Spain among other countries.
So they simply started bringing in diapora players.
On the surface thus tactic looks simple but lets look at Cape Verde more closley.
Cape Verde has a population of around 500,000 people living in the country
But what is interesting is that 1.5 million people of Cape Verdean origin or descent live outside the country.
That is three times the population back home scattered across the globe — concentrated particularly in the United States, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Portugal alone is home to roughly 50,000 Cape Verdeans by nationality, with another 150,000 to 200,000 of Cape Verdean descent.
That single country that had elite academies, professional infrastructure, and a direct pathway into European football, holds a community of around 200,000 to 250,000 people with links to the Blue Sharks.
And yes, one of those links, little known as it may be, traces back through the ancestry of Cristiano Ronaldo himself.
But lets not move offcourse. The point is this: Cape Verde can fish from an ocean.
Their diaspora players are not just plentiful, they are located in exactly the right places.
England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy — the top footballing nations.
When Cape Verde’s selectors cast their net, they are casting it into waters where development is world-class, competition is fierce, and talent is refined over decades.
The result?
Cape Verde recently became the first African nation in history to arrive at an Africa Cup of Nations with a squad in which not a single player competed in Africa.
The pool of footballers with some form of Cape Verdean heritage available their coaches is in the thousands.
That number is roughly the same as the entire Zambia Super League and the entire National Division One combined.
Every player in Zambia’s top two tiers of football could be even less that Cape Verdes pool of diaspora players.
2. LETS LOOK AT ZAMBIA
Zambia’s home population is approximately 21 million people.
On paper, that is a far larger than Cape Verde.
But the diaspora picture is different.
While there is no reliable official data on how many Zambians live abroad estimates do exist.
Zambia’s estimated diapora is between 200,000 and 400,000 Zambians worldwide. And the majority of those are not in Europe.
Most Zambians living outside the country are actually concentrated in region— South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, the DRC, Mozambique.
Smaller communities exist in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and beyond — but they are small.
Now lets be honest
Not all Zambians in thw diaspora are of working or playing age.
Not all are male.
Not all are interested in football. Not all have played competitively.
And of those in the regional African diaspora — South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi — how many are competing in environments that meaningfully develop elite footballers?
When we look at the real picture Zambia would struggle to find 23 diaspora players good enough to form a competitive international squad.
Right now, our most prominent diaspora footballer recently joined is the fifth tier of English football — a level roughly equivalent to Zambia’s National Division Five in terms of competitiveness.
There is nothing wrong with that and Many Cape Verdeans also play at low levels.
But Cape Verde has access to thousands more, the sheer volume means that even from the lower tiers, elite talents still surface in numbers.
3. THE OCEAN AND THE POND
Lets imagine or think about it this way.
There is are two finishing businesses.
One operates in an ocean and the other in a small pond.
Which business is likely to have more fish to sell?
Naturally the one that operated in an ocean.
Cape Verde has an ocean. Zambia has a pond.
You can catch fish from both.
But a pond has limits. It can only hold so many fish — and once you have taken the best, the dish reduce and it takes time to add new ones.
An ocean? You can fish that indefinitely.
The volumes, the variety, the depth — it sustains a long-term policy.
The Cape Verde diaspora model works for Cape Verde precisely because their pond is, in reality, an ocean.
Their numbers, their locations, and the quality of the football environments their diaspora is found in make a full diaspora strategy very workable though even it has its risks ( but thats a story for another day)
Zambia’s pond is real. It exists. It has value.
But it is shallow, and it is small — and a policy built entirely around it would exhaust its resources quickly and leave the national team no better off than if it had focused those energies elsewhere.
4. WHAT ZAMBIA CAN ACTUALLY DO
This does not mean Zambia should ignore its diaspora.
Absolutely not.
But it means we must be honest about what a diaspora policy can deliver for us, and what it cannot.
The realistic model for Zambia is a combination approach: identify and incorporate the exceptional diaspora talents who genuinely add quality above what our local pool provides, while continuing to invest seriously in the development of our home-based players.
Not one or the other. Both.
The Cape Verde story is inspiring.
Their success at this World Cup deserves every headline it is generating.
But inspiration without understanding why Cape Verde are succesfull can lead us on a path where we become directionless.
Cape Verde’s diaspora is their superpower because of who they are, where they came from, and where their people landed across generations of migration.
Zambia’s story is different.
Our superpower, if we develop it properly, remains the 21 million people on home soil and the handful of outstanding talents in our smaller diaspora who can be combined.
Our Zambian based approach has created the Worlds All time Topscorer in a calender year ( Godfrey Chitalu), an African Player of the year ( Kalusha Bwalya) among many others.
For now we can only clap for Cape Verde as we review what we cab learn from them and add into our own football.