FAZ President Andrew Kamanga admits his priority in the first 30 days of his second term this month will be to salvage Chipolopolo’s AFCON 2021 qualifier hopes.
Chipolopolo are in the brink of a third successive AFCON absence after collecting just 3 points from their opening four Group H qualifying matches with two fixtures left to save their souls.
The results have left Zambia bottom of Group H and now have a herculean task to beat Algeria at home and Zimbabwe away on March 25 and 29 respectively.
Algeria has already qualified on 10 points with two games to spare and are now playing for their top two classification.
Zimbabwe are second on 5 points while Botswana third on 4 points.
“I think the cry from all the soccer fans has been the non-performance of the senior national team and I think that is the area which we are going to prioritize,” Kamanga said.
“As you know, we have two qualifiers against Algeria and Zimbabwe and we are still in with a chance.
“The next three-four weeks will be very, very crucial to ensure that we get the team qualified to the AFCON.
“We really need to have everyone on board; all the players who are eligible will be given an opportunity to be part of the team so that ultimately we achieve that target of qualifying the team.
“We also have the World Cup qualifiers starting in June and we hope that this time round we will have a strong case to put up for the qualification to the World Cup.”
The 2022 Qatar qualifiers have yet to start and Zambia are in Group B with Tunisia, Mauritania and Equatorial Guinea.
CAF has yet to release June’s fixture dates after the Qatar qualifiers were postponed from October 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
All the best to FAZ.
The most important thing is the destructive and corrupt forces of Kalusha and Lusambo have been defeated by FIFA and the Zambia football fraternity.