SO Zambia will have to wait for another four years before attempting again to qualify a women football team to the All-Africa Games.
This follows the Shepolopolo’s failed attempt to clinch a spot at this year’s Pan African Games to be staged in Congo Brazzaville in September.
On Friday, Albert Kachinga’s women were denied access to the Congo Brazzaville party by Tanzania despite stunning the Twiga Stars 3-2 in Dar-Es-Salaam, bowing out on a 5-6 goal aggregate over two legs.
Zambia’s undoing was the shocking 2-4 home loss to Tanzania in the first leg of the final round of qualifiers.
However, the Shepolopolo’s exit did not come as a surprise looking at the way the team prepared for this important assignment.
Firstly, the team delayed going into camp and this worried Kachinga, who obviously knew he had an uphill battle to adequately prepare the team in the shortest possible time.
The team could also not get any quality preparatory match to gauge the players’ fitness and readiness for battle.
Lack of preparatory games was not just exclusively for the women as even the male teams from the senior squad up to the Under-17 were not properly gauged through friendlies before embarking on their equally failed continental projects this year.
The senior team, Chipolopolo only had one friendly match against South Africa before heading to Equatorial Guinea for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) where they were knocked out in the first round.
Then the junior teams – Under-17 and Under-20 – followed suit by being ejected early from their respective African competitions.
Like I have stated before on this platform, apart from the Chipolopolo, all these other national teams do not have sponsors.
This means the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) needs to double up its efforts and attract the corporate world to begin sponsoring these vulnerable teams.
As for women football, it will not be a bad idea if FAZ can engage the Republican Vice-President, Inonge Wina to help them woo the corporate world to adopt the senior and junior teams.
I will deliberately dwell more on women football which is currently under-developed in Zambia.
For starters, FAZ needs to adopt the FIFA mission on women football of “develop the game, touch the world, build a better future”.
FAZ needs to create a strong platform for the long-term stability of women’s football and ensure the future of the game is bright at every level.
Football House can do this by sticking to FIFA’s 2015-2018 programmes and guidelines on women football development.
This programme provides an overview and guidelines to member associations on FIFA’s agenda on women football development.
FIFA encourages FAZ and other member associations to build national competitions and domestic women’s football leagues and also adopt youth and grassroots development programmes for girls.
The main goals of FIFA’s women’s football development programmes are:
• To help member associations to overcome the main challenges of developing women’s football
• To ensure that every girl and woman who wants to play football has the opportunity to do so
• To promote female opportunities, both on and off the pitch
• To involve more former female players
• To have more quality top-level female coaches
• To help build sustainable national and regional women’s football competitions at various levels
• To encourage the promotion and marketing of women’s football at all levels to grow participation, build the audience and target potential partners.
I hope FAZ will do something about this and build sustainable women football structures across the nation.
As I sign off this week, I wish the Under-23 men’s team the best of luck as the Olympic squad take on Nigeria in the final qualifier to the 2015 All Africa Games.
Fighton Simukonda’s men have a mammoth task of salvaging Zambian football on the international scene following disastrous results recorded by the other national teams this year.  Your views are welcome on malungaf@gmail.com