Government has was warned that it will disband the national football team and threatened to stop funding football, saying a lot of tax payer’s money was going to waste at the expense of the sport.
In expressing his discontentment, Sports Minister Chishimba Kambwili said he was not happy with the Chipolopolo’s continued poor performance and threatened to crack the whip for continued wastage of tax-payer’s money.
The Chipolopolo drew 1-1 with minnows Lesotho on Sunday in a 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying match in Maseru, while Ghana hammered Sudan 4-0 in the other Group D game played in Kumasi to reduce Zambia’s lead to one point.
Kambwili said the technical bench and the players should know that a lot of tax payer’s money is being spent on football which they have continued to waste by putting up unacceptable behaviour.
He said football affects a lot of people’s lives but it seemed the technical bench and the rest of the players had forgotten that fact and were allowing complacency to get into their game.
”We are extremely disappointed with the national team performance. Soon after the game, I called Kalusha Bwalya and told him this is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to go on.”
“There is no way the Zambia national team, who are the immediate past African champions, can be drawing with teams like Lesotho. It is an insult to the Zambian people. It is a sheer waste of public money. So why should I continue putting money in the national team that can’t give you results?
“I would rather disband the team – stop participating in all international assignments until they put their house in order and prove to us that indeed, we are going to spend money on a successful project. So I am giving them a warning that if they don’t qualify to the World Cup, I think it will not augur very well,” a seething Kambwili said.
Kambwili said the poor run by the senior national team was a matter that needed action and that he would meet the FAZ executive committee and the technical bench soon after returning so they explain the team’s poor performance.
“We shall not sit aloof and see first tax payer’s money go to waste and then see standards deteriorate. If this does not change, I am going to take action and the consequences will not be desirable but that may have to be necessary,” he said.
Kambwili, who singled out goalkeeper Kennedy Mweene and goal scorer Collins Mbesuma as the outstanding players from the Lesotho game, did not specify what action he would take; only saying he will act strongly.
“It appears these people are drunk with being African champions in 2012 and they think they have reached their highest peak and they can’t perform. How can you go and substitute Collins Mbesuma when he was holding three players? And those players immediately Mbesuma was removed they went forward because they had nobody to mark and that is how we conceded the goal,” the minister said.
Kambwili said at the Orange 2013 Africa Cup in South Africa, Zambia drew all its matches and has carried on with the trend and expressed ire at the players for allowing Lesotho to come from behind and level the scores.
“Let them say what we are not giving them. They just cough and we do what they ask us to do. So why are they failing to give us back result in return? Football in Zambia is politics – it is everybody’s lunch and breakfast. People collapse when the national team losses, some people die; we have lost lives because of football.”
“I would rather we stop participating in these assignments so that we don’t continue killing our people with shock. Those boys don’t know what is at stake. It is not a question of just going to participate – we are not going to be mere participants, we have to be conquerors,” he said.
Kambwili said the team has clearly lost the fighting spirit it exhibited at the Orange 2012 Africa Cup co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
“It is just the attitude. The players are not just serious. They have stopped putting in the spirit of dying a little for mother Zambia. Dennis Liwewe says die a little for mother Zambia, but this group of players is not dying a little for mother Zambia,” he said.
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