By Mercy Chewe
Minister of Sports Emmanuel Mulenga is lamenting Zambia’s failure to qualify for the Cameroon 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.
This is the third straight time Chipolopolo is missing out on AFCON qualification.
With one formality game remaining, coach Micho’s side is bottom of Group H with just four points after losing three matches, winning one and forcing one draw.
“I think as Sports Minister indeed I am concerned that we have not gone to the Africa Cup. We need to go back to the drawing board and what we are working up on as a ministry is to make sure we introduce FAZ league in schools,” Mulenga said.
The Ndola Central Member of Parliament believes Zambia’s failure to win the first round matches in the qualifying campaign dashed hopes of making it to the continental championship.
“In whatever you do if you want to better your life or the way you have conducted yourself in the past, it is important that you look at the past where you are coming from where you are and where you need to go. So we need to look at the mistakes which were made especially when we played Zimbabwe here at home and when we played Botswana away,” Mulenga said.
Zambia launched the qualifiers with a 5-0 loss to Algeria in North Africa before losing to Zimbabwe 2-1 in Lusaka and managed to beat Botswana 2-1 at home but lost the reverse fixture 1-0 in Gaborone.
“We should treat each game with the importance it deserves whether it is the first game or the second game. If we didn’t lose those games I think we were going to be in a better position to qualify. We should not only put our heads together when we reach almost at the far end and then we start saying if we win this then we have chances to qualify.”
Mulenga added: “Let’s win the first games, let’s make sure we win the first games so that the games which we will remain there after will be just for formality sake.”
Zambia faces Zimbabwe on Monday away in Harare in the last Cameroon 2021 AFCON qualifying match.
