I have heard a lot of clutter in the post-mortem of Sunday’s 2015 All-Africa Games qualifying flop.
Change the team, preparations were poor, we needed friendlies, the selection was poor….sadly, I refuse to agree with any of that.
Coach Fighton Simukonda said something at the post-match briefing that I think was meant for us to read between the lines.
“This is the best 100 we have in the country. There is no where else where we can start looking for players maybe in the future but we have an Olympic qualifier coming up,” Simukonda said.
“Now, so if you start bringing players now then I don’t know where we are heading to.”
He is right about the best that is sadly is not good enough and it all comes down to the quality the coaches at the club’s are producing.
It doesn’t take a Martian to tell us that at club level the fundamentals of scoring and sheer innovation from some of our coaches is poor and has added to the average strikers we have hyped, tolerated and worshipped with every miss that we cap always with heartbreak.
Just look at Zambia’s trend at the Africa Cup post-1996.
Zambia averages one win a tournament but Chipolopolo backed the trend in 2012 but reared its ugly head again in the subsequent two tournaments.
We need a revolution, a change of tactical doctrine in the league for things to get better and that doesn’t take a lot of money.
There is a lot or rigid thinking on the benches at the clubs and it has hurt the prospects for bigger things for most of our exports who either fail to adjust abroad or continue with their habits unabated.
And with the hosting of the 2017 U20 coming up we don’t have much (any) time left. We need to learn developmental techniques from the best in the world, the Ajax of Amsterdam Academy, the Barcelona FC Academy and many more related schools of excellence. The days of sending scouts to Mwinilunga or something are over, only a deliberate policy at Primary & Secondary School level will work. While academic work is indeed important, for some of these kids, their “talanta” in sport is their ticket out of poverty & a chance to compete at a world level. Let everyone along the way help them suceed…
YES, MR SIMUKONDA IS RIGHT: the quality of the sample space has terribly deteriorated, not only in Soccer, but many other walks of life in Zambia. In soccer, terms such as Liwewe’s ‘schoolboy international’ have vanished because inter-school and inter-provincial tournaments no longer exist. The mines have turned a blind eye to the development and upliftment of soccer standards in their greedy pursuit of profits. And worst of all, FAZ, which is a corporate institution is being run by mafias who are ill educated and incompetent to run such an institution – they don’t even facilitate professional coaching or refereeing programmes with a view of raising the standard of beautiful game in the country – KALUSHA MUST GO!!!