By SANDRA MWILA –

THE Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) has admitted that the under performance of the junior national teams is due to a weak structure at grassroots level.
FAZ executive committee member Lee Kawanu, who is also in charge of youth football, said little has being done at grassroots level hence the underperformance of the age group teams at continental championships.
Kawanu said this when he featured on Zambia National Broadcasting Cooperation (ZBNC) sports programme, Sport On.
Both the Zambia under-17 and 20 sides were eliminated in the first round of the 2015 Niger Africa Junior Championship and Senegal 2015 Africa Youth Championships respectively.
Kawanu said that the Under-17 and 20 teams would have still performed badly at the continental competitions even if they had adequate preparations because of the weak structure.
“Football has a lot more to do than just preparations for a tournament, the background of a player matters, you need to know what have they being doing from the age of eight till they join the under 17 team. You find most of them did nothing as most of them start their football careers late,” he said.
He said the junior team’s performance had nothing to do with camping because they were in camp for a month or so before their respective tournaments started.
“If you look at the Under 17, they were camped six weeks before going to Niger and the Under 20 were in Senegal 10 days before the tournament but they were still booted out in the first round,” he said.
Kawanu said the teams will start recording the desired results not until when proper structures were put in place at grassroots level. He said the junior players should be commended for having qualified to their respective African soccer showpieces under the current circumstances.
“If you were to ask me, I think the junior players should be commended for qualifying to their respective tournaments and have room to do better in the future,” he said.
Kawanu said qualifying to the Africa Youth and Junior Championships merely demonstrated that the Zambian teams were among the best eight countries in Africa.
He said FAZ is working tirelessly on how best it can develop grassroots football and the results would be seen in future.