Stakeholders on the local football front are evaluating Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president Keith Mweemba’s first year in charge amid calls that he needs to get things moving as the clock ticks.
Mweemba on 9 May 2025 defeated Andrew Kamanga by 46-20 votes during the elective annual general meeting held in Kabwe to become FAZ Chief.
Supporters of the FAZ boss say he has united the football family, but his critics are assessing him around the performance of national teams in the 12 months he has been in office.
“The Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) Annual General Meeting (AGM), held on Saturday, 9th May 2026, was defined by an atmosphere of uncharacteristic serenity a sharp departure from the volatility of years past. Marking the conclusion of Keith Mweemba’s first year in office, the orderliness of the proceedings served as a tangible metric of his leadership,” journalist Mabvuto Phiri wrote.
But football administrator Stanley Kaseko says Mweemba has not succeeded in most objectives he set out to meet in his initial phase at Football House.
Kaseko noted that in the last one year the men’s and women’s national teams have failed to make any impact in all senior and junior tournaments they qualified for or participated in.
“He must realise that he’s got a duty to build the national team which is a flagbearer for the nation,” Kaseko told Daily Revelation.
“As long as he doesn’t find a short-term solution to sort out the Chipolopolo squad, the problem will continue. No one will trust him, even if he comes with all those peacemaking statements,” he said.
Kaseko decried the handling of Avram Grant’s departure as Chipolopolo coach last October.
“So if there was proper trust for each other in football, where we know that the constitution is meant to stand the test of time, the regulations, and everything, and had the trust in the league, trust in everything which was happening, then Keith wouldn’t have destroyed the teams he found, because the primary thing of the chairman or the president of the association is, first of all, to manage and run the Zambian national team on behalf of the Zambian government,” Kaseko said.
“So, if there was trust in the previous regime after he won the election, probably he wouldn’t have tampered with the senior national team; he could have tampered with the junior national teams because that’s the foundation, but for the senior national team, he would have maybe held on to a bit. All what he needed to do was to get into the plan of the national teams and let the teams compete in all five tournaments which the teams qualified for, because when they were getting to power, all the teams had qualified for major tournaments,” he said.
Kaseko bemoaned Zambia’s performance at the Africa Cup in Morocco.
“So, what was needed was to go and understand which challenges they have that they would have gone with to the tournament. And look, who advises somebody to say we should go to a major tournament by bringing novices in the tournament? We knew the moment they had cut the senior national team to eleven players, and they brought maybe twelve or thirteen new players,” he said.
“We knew, some of us who have been in football a long time, that we are not going to do anything at AFCON, because you cannot go to do trials at a tournament. So, that was the undoing,” Kaseko said.
It is clear that Mweemba’s sermons of unity and harmony in local football should be backed by improved performances by national teams.
