Ex-Mighty Mufulira Wanderers player and club Chairman Joseph Menzu has lamented his old team’s stagnant performance in the last 25 years.
National Division One side Mighty last won silverware in 1997 when they scooped the BP Top Eight.
The nine-time league champions last won the Super Division title in 1996.
In an interview, 82-year-old Menzu, who played for Mighty in the inaugural Zambian National Football League 1962, says inadequate sponsorship has contributed to Wanderers’ dwindling display in the last 25 years.
“Mufulira Wanderers is still in my blood up to now. I know that we are struggling because of finances. If the team was well sponsored like others, Mufulira Wanderers should have been in the Premier League,” Menzu said.
Menzu became Mighty team manager upon retiring in 1973.
“It is painful, you see when someone has been in both as a player and as an administrator you have that team or club at heart. And you see it struggling, it is painful. It is just that they don’t have money to really organise themselves and so on,” he said.
Menzu served as Mighty Chairman between 1993 and 1997.
“If they (Mighty) had money, I think Wanderers would have been somewhere, so sponsorship is needed. Really sponsorship is needed, not those you give a handful for running up and down.”
“You know football is an expensive venture. You’ve got to push in, throw in money. Mopani was not prepared to do that. You see, at one time, we heard that they had to choose between Nkana and Mufulira Wanderers and they said they were to sponsor Nkana and Mufulira Wanderers became a community team. If it is a community team it means you don’t want to spend money on that club,” Menzu said.
Wanderers have been in and out of the Super Division in the last 20 years.
Its not neccessarily money the only problem. The team had fanatical supporters but none of them with any business acumen. When the going got tough and ZCCM disbanded and Mighty had no sponsors it was time for a business manager to run the club and start looking for Moise Katumbi or Patrick Motsepe of Zambia to buy shares. But over and over we heard Mighty crying for sponsorship every year. Mighty is a brand waiting for a manager to exploit
Mighty and other ZCCM teams were strictly football teams. They were for the joy of their communities. When ZCCM died they should have been left with sports management teams. They were left only with soccer lovers who couldn’t take them forward.
Remember the same thing happened to Ndola United, Strike Rovers, Vitafoam United FAZ and Fifa should have laid out a rescue plan for the copperbelt
Football is an industry like Music and Mining but most citizens dont treat it as such. That is where the problem lies.
I posed the question here that how come Lusaka Dynamos run by one man have not sunk to the bottom like the big teams?