Africa-Press – Zambia. FAZ president Andrew Kamanga says he is happy that the financial investment Football House makes in supporting junior teams has repaid with qualification to major events.
Featuring on ZNBC TV on Monday Night, Kamanga thanked government for supporting the senior men and women’s national teams but stressed that FAZ still had to foot the bill for nine other national teams.
The FAZ chief revealed that FAZ had to source for funds for the various junior teams for men and women in their participation in various tournaments.
“First of all, I must state that thanks to government, they take care of the senior men’s team and senior women’s team. That is the obligation of government. However, we have under 15, which was never there for both men and women. We have got under 17, under 20, under 23 competitions,” he said.
“All these competitions FAZ has to pay today. We are proud, I have told you in 2022, we qualified to all competitions at both CAF. We have won more COSAFA competitions. But remember that when you compete in COSAFA, you don’t get prize money for it. You spend money to go into a competition even now.”
He added, “I will give you an example. The under 17 had to go to Morocco. Do you know how much we spent $150,000 on tickets? The under 20 are currently in Egypt. Do you know how much we have had to spend on tickets? A hundred thousand dollars. The women under 17, they have just qualified to the World Cup. Do you know how much we spent on the qualifiers?”
Kamanga said his executive took a deliberate step to invest in women’s football to reap benefits that has seen the Copper Queens qualify to two Olympics, FIFA World Cup, WAFCON bronze and back-to-back FIFA World Cup qualification for the under-17 girls.
“We found it (women’s football). But what did we do? We prioritized it. We invested more in women’s football. We started winning COSAFA, started going to the Africa Cup, we have gone to the Women’s Africa Cup three times. We have gone to the Olympics twice in 2020 and 2024.We have gone to the World Cup for the first time. Senior women in 2023. We went to the World Cup for the women under 17 last year. Last week they qualified again back to the U17 World Cup. Back-to-back appearances to the World Cup. Are you telling me that has come at a zero cost?” he said.
He also cited the grand steps made in bumping up sponsorship for the league that he found at a measly K7, 000.
“When I came, clubs were getting as low as K7, 000. I had to move that from K7, 000. We started with K200, 000. It went up to K400, 000. Today, it is K1.2 million,” he said.
Kamanga said his executive worked hard to rebound the Chipolopolo after having failed to qualify for three consecutive Africa Cup of Nations.
“We had to struggle to qualify; we actually missed out on the AFCON three times. However, we took a decisive decision that we were going to invest in the grassroots and invest in the junior teams. So the first four years, we spent a lot of time without producing results, which eventually started showing in the second term, which started in 2022,” he said.
“As a result, we qualified to the 2023 Africa Cup for men and also qualified to the 2025 edition. Therefore, you can clearly see that the work we did in the first term has delivered in the second term. So for me, I am very, very happy that we have built a strong foundation.”
Kamanga hailed the work done by various independent bodies in the electoral process.
“They operate independently and we don’t even have access to these committees. I cannot instruct them to remove somebody or add somebody. It is not even possible. You can even verify independently,” he said.
“I am very happy that the process started that way, and I am also even happier that, the appeals process was able to still accommodate the others to come back. It cannot be a dent on my profile because it that is for the electoral committee to explain, but I am just giving you the appreciation of why we have judicial bodies and how important they are.”
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