Embattled Football Association of Zambia, FAZ Andrew Kamanga president has responded to ‘recent comments by former President Rupiah Banda on Zambian football in which he spoke about the senior national team’s performance’.
Under the reign of Kamanga, the Chipolopolo Boys has failed to qualify to three AFCONs, and this has infuriated the Chipolopolo faithful.
In a ten minutes long interview on Kennedy Gondwe’s Studio Ken, the former President wondered why Kamanga has not called for a stakeholders to discuss the declining standards of Zambian football.
Pressure has been mounting on Kamanga to resign in the past 2 weeks. \
During Zambia’s recent 4-0 win over Mauritania, Kamanga was booed at Heroes Stadium as fans vented their anger him.
While it is not yet known whether he will call for an indaba or not, Kamanga released a statement on Thursday night in which his statement was all about diplomancy.
Kamanga failed to address the issues surrounding the national team’s poor performance.
“His [Rupiah Banda] desire to see certain individuals involved in football decision-making and other aspects of the game, I will, in due course, out of respect to the former president, seek audience with him to exchange views on the matters he touched on,” read the statement.
“I wish to reiterate that I have only full admiration for him as a father figure, former President of the Republic, and former vice chairman FAZ, chairman of Zambian Soccer Fans in the seventies and he has personally on occasion been a source of advice and wise counsel.
Kamanga went further to state that his FAZ executive is ‘remains open to all advice and counsel from stakeholders who seek the betterment of Zambian football and continue to maintain an open-door policy.’
Zambia was thrashed by Tunisia on Tuesday in the final group match of the World Cup qualifiers.
This clown and his executive should just resign. Have they no shame?
It’s a sheer waste of time to ask this man to resign or seek audience with other stakeholders because he is blinded by arrogance. His Arrogance and Cowardice of the Faz council will be the downfall of Zambian football. This guy must just be impeached!!! The entire Faz council is useless, toothless and pointless to maintain.
Please leave Kamanga alone, Kamanga’s job is not to play the 90 minute game, but to provide all requirements for the players to win games from January to December year in year out! But the players and the coaches use their hearts to think instead of their brains, they kick the ball without looking where they are directing it. Is that Kamanga’s problem? Don’t blame standards at national team level also look at starndards at club level, due to lack of proper sponsorship from public and private institutions , starndards have really nose-dived over the past 30 years. And privitization is partly to blame for this, because the new Indian and Chinese companies are only interested in profits, and sports financing! But why don’t football stake holders look at women soccer as well, which is doing so fine! So let’s not be lop-sided. There should be no blame game here. The coaches should actually also be directly be blamed for leaving out some players that can perform e.g. Jimmy Mukeya is more intelligent player than Patson Daka. Daka just runs, but he lacks the necessary intelligence when it matters most. Mukeya is very accurate at goal. The coaches also should take blame for failing to come with a system. Look at Tunisia, they were beatable but the coach had put in place a system which made the Tunisian players not to panicky in the penalty area. They always looked around for the best placed player to score! But for our team, Fashion Sakala wanted to score whenever he got the ball in front of goal, same thing can be said it Patson, Emmanuel Banda, Kangwa brothers, Lubambo etc. Why can’t the coaches put a to stop to that by coming up with a winning system. Without that Chambeshi will not be better than other national coaches!