FAZ president Andrew Kamanga says his executive has laid a strong foundation that may even outlive them.
During an MTN sponsored Bola Talk Show at Hotel InterContinental, Kamanga said he cannot talk about re-election when his mandate runs up to March next year.
Kamanga said he wanted to be remembered as a president who brought order into the game.
“We have reasonably done very well, of course the big ticket item will always be our failure to qualify to the AFCON for 2017 and 2019. But that aside we are on a strong trajectory that will set a very strong foundation for Zambian football,” he said.
“When the national team does not do well, it is the President who takes the bashing. That is the narrative we need to run away from because at the end of the day, football is run by the executive. It is not a one man show, there are eight of us.”
Kamanga said that a lot of strides had been made in the game like the re-negotiated MTN sponsorship deal that had seen clubs get K200, 000 from K7,000.
He also said that league restructuring exercise was firmly on course although some critics had trashed the process.
Kamanga said that league restructuring had presented an opportunity to clubs to develop their infrastructure.
“We have also gone ahead to re-organize the league in line with the CAF directive. We had a few murmurs from some areas complaining that we cannot play football in the rain season,” he said.
“We should embrace change, we re-organize ourselves and invest in infrastructure.”
He said that there were forces in football who could never forgive him for winning an election that they thought he had no chance.
“To some people, the only crime I committed was to win an election they were sure I was never going to win,” he said.
On re-election talk, Kamanga said the call was up to the members to back him or not but believed he had done sufficiently in the last three years.
“The mandate is up to March, so I cannot say that I am going for re-election. I think the members will decide whether indeed I have delivered and I deserve another term, so I cannot pre-empty until we get to the end of the mandate,” he said.
“Going forward I think we have done extremely well and our success should not be measured only on our failure to qualify for AFCON.”
@FAZonline
