… FAZ boss has set performance bar too low
Chingola football administrator Blackwell Siwale has asked FAZ president Andrew Kamanga to relinquish his position on account of setting a mediocre precedent in the country’s top sport.
Siwale says Kamanga’s continued stay in office in the wake of glaring failure will set a very low bar for Zambian football administration as it will make it make the unprecedented failure to qualify for two successive Africa Cup of Nations the norm.
Featuring on Radio Ichengelo on Monday, Siwale said Kamanga and his executive did not have Zambian football at heart.
“The danger is that the precedent the current executive is setting. It means if I come into office tomorrow and we failed to qualify on two occasions, I’ll put up an argument and say why are we crying for my blood when the previous executive also failed on two occasions,” Siwale says.
Though serving a lifeban from all football activities for alleged misconduct, Siwale has declared his intentions to replace Kamanga in a bid to rescue Zambian football.
“The best way to do is step aside. Let some other people take over. I know that we’ve got prominent people in society; good administrators who can manage our football at FAZ level and take us to the Promised Land of qualifying for AFCON every time,” he said.
Siwale added that it was troubling that the only success Kamanga was singing was an extension of an existing agreement with MTN.
“Bear in mind that the current executive promised us that they will bring in a lot of sponsors in the game. We have only continued with the ones we started,” he said, although Kamanga and his executive recently announced a $1 million deal for lower league with Eden University.
Siwale accused Kamanga of being too rhetorical with little or nothing to show for as tangible success in administering the game.
“No one will be mourning if they have performed,” he said.
Siwale said it was unacceptable that failed national team coach Sven Vanderbroek should continue in his job when he had not met his targets.
“The national team coach was engaged solely to qualify us to the Africa Cup. If he has failed what else must we say? Well, we should shake hands and say goodbye.
“The running contract as far as I believe was for five games and the fifth game is when we will play Namibia so after Namibia we should shake hands and say goodbye.”
Siwale insisted that Kamanga should pave way for administrators with the mantle to redeem Zambian football.
But Kamanga says setting aside Zambia’s failure to qualify to the Africa Cup will help people appreciate the successes his executive has scored.
“There is still a lot that is happening in our football. We’ve scored a lot of positives and I think this is why we find it strange that hosting and winning the AFCON under 20 is not even attributed to our executive because the word out there is there is just total failure and total collapse.
Kamanga said his executive had scored a lot of success at junior national team level although the Zambia U-20 on Tuesday failed for the second year running to reach the regional COSAFA championship which the country is hosting.
“What we’ve done is that with the junior teams we’ve done very very well. Last year we won Africa Cup after preparing the team adequately and they even went up to the World Cup.
“They [U-20] finished or came out in the quarter-final. They were the only African team who went that far so that in itself tells you that the investment we put in has paid off,” he bragged.
Zambia’s under-20 lost 2-1 to Zimbabwe in the COSAFA semi-finals hosted on the Copperbelt/We Love Football.
