Friday, March 29, 2024

Zambia’s qualifying flop saddens ‘Bubble’ Malitoli

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Former Chipolopolo star Kenneth “Bubble” Malitoli has lamented Zambia’s failure to qualify for the Gabon 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals.

Zambia missed out on qualifying for the AFCON following a 3-2 loss in Guinea Bissau in a round five match played on Saturday.

In an interview in Ndola, Malitoli said failure to win home games costed Zambia.

“It is sad that we lost on Saturday but I think we messed it up here in Zambia when we draw two games at home,” he said.

Zambia is placed third in Group E with six points after recording one win, three draws and a loss.

“It feels very bad that we are not going to the Africa Cup. Again we have to go back to the drawing board and restart afresh.

“We need to re-organise ourselves. Let’s find out what went wrong and why we didn’t win at home,” said the ex-Nkana and Esperance striker.

Zambia last missed out on Africa Cup qualification in 2004

12 COMMENTS

  1. Zambia had 11 players as compared to their opponents 12
    Every person with eyes saw that the ref wanted Zambia to lose
    He achieved his mission and he is smiling

  2. Well the ref yes helped guinea but anyone who has played soccer in Africa prepares for hometown refereeing. Kamanga has never played any football so he doesn’t know how to prepare for these things. Chicken George has just confirmed that we can’t produce a local coach despite playing feetball for 50 years. Patrick Philip was the first coach to fail to qualify us to afcon in 20 years. Let’s fire both Chicken and Kamanga if we want to qualify for world cup 2018.

  3. Its true! Lets Fire The Coaches. Its sad and I`m not happy at all. They don`t know how to search for talent but relay on the same team of 2012 and they keep on cheating on ages. Shame Lwandamina. You have costed us a lot.

  4. Me I think the problem is our local coaches. It seems they have targets (players) to fix. Janza came and started dropping players like Chris katongo reasons known to him alone. Lwandamina come and he starts leaving out the likes of chisamba LUNGU. He is also keeping two jobs..why?? Janza failed and lwandamina is failing as well. For these reasons expatriate coach is best for Zambia

  5. We need a new coach because chicken is a chicken. He is blind when it comes to select players. It is not time to experiment. How are we going to manage making it to the world cup, we are failing to qualify for Africa cup. We can`t even learn our mistakes from friendly games. It sucks to be Zambian right now.

  6. Stop blaming the match officials. If you give the police a reason to arrest u that’s exactly what they will do. The Zambia team is just no longer good enuf and needs fresh blood

  7. I think Zambia is still in contention for the 2017 Afcon.
    All they need to do is to beat Kenya by a wide margin…
    Congo is also sitting with 6 points just like Zambia…They have a goal advantage over Zambia though.

    • No Pele Kaimana please stop dreaming Group A has two countries with 10 points, group B has one with 12 points and another with 10 points, group D has two countries with 10 points. This is where best losers will be picked

  8. Player development is becoming poorer & poorer, players who can’t shoot, can’t control a ball properly, can’t manage space or mark properly, the list goes on and on. We are missing kids in the key 8 – 12 & 12 – 16 age groups, thats when all the basics above should be inculcated, i.e. grades 4 – 11, thereafter it should be just polishing up.

    Trying to teach an 18 year old how to trap a ball, or move with or without a ball is already too late, in that regard the silence from FAZ over preparations for the 2017 U-20 CAF Youth Championships set for February – March next year is very worrying, Zambia as hosts should already be in gear 4 with identifying & polishing up the lads who will represent us and represent us well, instead we are greeted by a deafening silence!

    Wake up…

  9. I like your comments gentlemen!! I mentioned on another platform that we do not have tactics to get goals. How do you expect a team to get goals if a coach shouts to players “tule lwish guys…tule lwish guys”! My question is what will the player do with that instruction? What kind of tactics do we us? I am not close to a coach but if you want to win, there must be plans(methodology) that you will implement to get goals? I see nothing in our team to get goals and that is why you end up loosing games or fail to score!
    Right now I don’t hear anything around the under 20. At this stage I though they should be talking of series of friendlies against good team in the world to assess the readiness to compete. What is being done to polish the under 20 right now? We can only guess. And you…

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