DEAR oh dear.! Zanaco seems not so interested in stabilising the team as they go into the ‘big boys’ competition of the CAF Champions League.
These reports of players leaving and others about to depart are really alarming and that is not the style of a team that is ambitious enough to win the league title or even make a mark in the continental football like the Champions League.
Roderick Kabwe, one key player, is walking away on a free transfer and then Salulani Phiri is also a confirmed goner. There is word that Fashion Sakala, their main striker in the just-ended phenomenal season is about to trek to the bright lights of South Africa.
It must also be mentioned that Zesco United is trying to restock with two Zanaco players on their radar in the form of Fackson Kapumbu and academy graduate Dave Daka.
My advice to Zanaco is that hold on to your best players if you want to win anything. The league you just won was because you probably lost no player last season and also that you team remained undisturbed.
The quality that the players who are leaving have is what is most worrying and despite the club having plans to bring in a number of foreign players, they will need time to blend in the system and by the time they strike an understanding, the league will be beyond you, you will be out of the Champions league and fans will not be saying the best things about the team.
Players may have their wish but they have got contracts that they need to honour and explain to them the club’s dream.
I remember Zanaco once had a vision of selling players, especially to China, and then chairman Masautso Nyatando told the country it was more profitable (back account wise) to sell players than win the league.
Zanaco then was team winning nothing but looked they like could win something. It’s only after they started holding on to their best players that these seven league titles have flown into the Club House.
If they want to get back to selling players and winning nothing, they better make their intentions known so that the fans expect little of them as they venture into continental football, where by the way they don’t have the best of records.
So I expect the executive to show some fight in holding on to some key players instead of seeing how easily Roderick Kabwe and Salulani have gone away already. Keep your players, you win the league, sell them, you struggle and may even miss out on continental football next time.
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And just a few words on the happenings at City of Lusaka football club.
As an outsider, I can tell that problems at this club are as faithful to them as the black-and-white stripes are faithful to a Zebra.
I have never known a year when City of Lusaka has not had problems. This year seemed calm until early this month when lections came and there was confusion at the AGM that the meeting could not be held and got pushed to January 20.
And then the trustees, who are entrusted with take care of the club in case of a crisis, have decided to pull the plug on a progressing club. They have dissolved the executive and sugar coating their actions by saying they have simply withdraw the extension of executive in office.
That is what dissolving is Madam Evelyn Mulundika. The land this Woodlands stadium and its intrinsic value has brought more division than development and the proposed Shopping Mall will forever be a pipe dream.
The only way I see peace at City of Lusaka is when this generation of leaders goes away. The next generation may bring us progress at City of Lusaka.
For comments write shamsmuzo@gmail.com