The Player Drain snares Kalengo

Winston Kalengo's departure from  Zambian football to go and ply his trade in Congo Brazzaville comes no surprise. Zambian players have been easy pickings for foreign clubs whose owners have deep pockets, irrespective of the quality of the league's those clubs play in.

The antiquated remuneration structures in the Zambian Premier League leaves the door open for the snatching away of the best local talent. Most, if not all, of the clubs in the domestic league structure their remuneration by grouping players into three distinct tiers, with the best and most experienced players at the top, the promising and upcoming or fading older players in the middle, and the youth in the third bracket.
These three levels have ceilings that prevent players from earning their true worth.

An example is a football club I once served on the executive board of, which uses this structure, as all its rivals do. Though the tiers were similar to its competitors, their rivals upper limits were higher by amounts that were good enough to attract the attentions of our players.This also tied the club's hand when we sought to sign on several players and were unable to meet their demands. This also opened our players to overtures from our direct rivals and it was no surprise in mid season when we lost crucial players needed to take the team to league success. I have no doubt in my mind that this cost us the league title.

I have always advocated for the phasing out of this method of salary scales and its replacement by individually negotiated contracts. A player should be paid what he is worth and if it means breaking the bank to get them on board then so be it. I don't see why a top player in Zambia should not earn more if he can justify his earnings by delivering on the field and leading his club to success, both domestically and in the African club competitions, which gives the club access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and the potential to play in the lucrative World Cup of Clubs.

The onus is on clubs to utilise the various revenue streams available to them and not just rely on the grant from their corporate owners or government institutions to finance their operations. Once their financial base is more substantial, they can then untie their purse strings and hold on to their best talent for a longer period.

The current maximum wage structure will continue to keep Zambian clubs from succeeding in international competitions and further restrict player development by their absence from top flight African competitions.

Veteran Players in Developmental Team

The selection of Christopher Katongo and Isaac Chansa into the Zambia team that will participate in the African Nations Championship, CHAN, in Rwanda in January has raised eyebrows in football circles.

The two players, part of the generation introduced into the national team more than a decade ago have been out of the national team picture since 2013 in Chanda's case and 2014 in Katongo's.

Coach George Lwandamina's selection of the two into a tournament that is largely meant to develop players prevents two young players who are progressing in their careers from taking a forward step in their developmental process.

This is detrimental for the long term development of the next generation of players and the future of the national team. Zambia should be looking at bigger objectives such as qualification for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2018 World Cup in Russia. To include two players who will not be a part of this qualification process in a developmental team loses sight of the purposes of these competitions. I have always been opposed to the selection of players from the senior national team into junior sides as it adds nothing to their development and denies those players who need the experience to get to the next stage of their growth.

Cleaning the Football House

The resignation of Sepp Blatter was long overdue. The hijacking of football by a clique of self-serving officials is a rot that goes all the way down from world governing body to continental level and to the national associations that make the the 209 members of FIFA.

That 133 members voted for Sepp Blatter to stay on as president says everything about the cesspool that football has become.

This should be the first step in the wholesale cleaning of football at all levels to give the game leadership that is honest, has integrity and that puts football first, above personal gain.

Writing 'The Zambian Game.'

Writing 'The Zambian Game' was quite an experience. It involved delving back into the deepest reaches of memory to recall some of the most memorable moments I have spent following Zambian football and countless interviews with many of the people who were influential in making Zambian football so memorable over the years.

Below is an excerpt from the chapter that looks at Zambia's success in winning the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations.

Standing in Zambia’s path was a Ghanaian team, ranked among the favourites to win the tournament, and playing, if not with the expected dominance, with the air of a team that truly believed that nothing less than a place in the final was their destiny. Before the match Ghanaian midfielder, Sulley Muntari, is said to have scoffed at Renard’s credentials, remarking that he had only been the physical coach when he worked for the Black Stars. Renard took the comment in his stride, channelling it as a motivation rather than considering it a put-down. He explains, ‘Maybe Muntari has a short memory because I was doing seventy five percent of the training. Only the tactical approach was from Claude Le Roy because it was not special physical fitness or training, it was mixed. I remember I was with him many times in the gym, to prepare him but maybe at this time he didn’t see something of me because I didn’t make any decisions. With me, I was confident. I knew one day, my day would come and I knew sixteen of the twenty-three Ghana players. I said to my players, the final against Ivory Coast, this is our chance because today we will beat them and we will play the final, and we will win this final.’

Renard was not the only one in the Zambian contingent who found himself the target of cynics. He remembers an incident before the match against Ghana that strengthened the resolve of the Zambian team to win. ‘We had such a strong mentality. We were upset sometimes about the comments. Before the Ghana game, three players were in the press conference and one journalist asked, ‘Can you introduce yourselves because we don’t know you?’ Christopher Katongo was so upset but first, we believed in ourselves. We got strength, I don’t know where the strength came from but it was unbelievable. Me, I didn’t for a second, fear anybody; Ghana, Ivory Coast.’

As expected, Ghana dominated large spells of the match with possession in their favour but the Zambian team had their moments too. The turning point came when Renard took off James Chamanga and brought on Emmanuel Mayuka. He also replaced the more defensively-minded Francis Kasonde with Chisamba Lungu at a critical time on the match, when fatigue was beginning to creep into the Ghanaian team after their relentless but futile attempts on the Zambian goal. It took one flash of brilliance by Mayuka to decide the match, as he swiveled to create space and shot instantly, catching Adam Kwarasey off-guard. It proved the difference between the two teams and Zambia were in the final eighteen years after their last appearance in Tunisia in 1994.

Power Dynamos Football Club: A New Journey

Thirty years ago, 1984, I sat in the terraces at the Arthur Davies Stadium and watched Power Dynamos win their first-ever league title with a comprehensive 4-1 defeat of Mufulira Wanderers. The match, played under floodlights - a rare occurrence these days - was a thriller and I was overjoyed as Wisdom Chansa and company steamrolled over opposition that included talented players, among them Kalusha Bwalya, Philemon Mulala, and Frederick Kashimoto, all regular national team players.

Over the years as the playing generations changed my relationship with the players evolved, from hero worshipper to friendship, older brother to father figure and now, with recent my appointment as committee member at the club, to administrator.

The road ahead is one full of uncertainty as we, the members of the executive committee, seek to return the team to the heights of over two decades ago when Power Dynamos became the first Zambian team to lift a continental title with victory over Nigeria's BCC Lions, 5-4 on aggregate over two legs.

Since that glorious and memorable episode, Zambian football subsequently sunk to all all-time low with the decline of the domestic game, only to resurface in 2012 with an unexpected victory in the Africa Cup of Nations that reignited the passions of local fans , sparking a mini-revival of the local league.
We hope to, at Power Dynamos, build a club that will stand the test of time by making it a self-sustaining entity, win the league regularly, win an African title again and finally, play at the World Cup of Clubs.

This will take considerable effort and ingenuity given the paucity of commercial revenue streams in Zambian football and the reluctance of marketing executives in the corporate sector to look beyond the classical marketing tools of print, radio, outdoor and TV. Their view of football as just a game and not a vehicle for reaching the large, emotive audiences that follow the game make the task for commercial independence all the more difficult. One could say, in their defence, that Zambian football has itself not looked at the game introspectively and made itself available as a commercial vehicle. Domestic football is still plagued by cases of mismanagement, poor facilities, crowd violence and non-commercial decisions that beggar belief. Matches played midweek during working hours with virtually no crowd in attendance are a case in point.

On the field, there is still much work to be done to raise the technical level to that of the north African giants who continually dominate the continental competitions with the odd cup going to the deep-pocketed TP Mazembe of the Democratic republic of Congo. The players, too, need to raise their levels of professionalism to a higher plane with diet, media relations, work ethic, tactical discipline and off-field conduct all areas that could do with much improvement.

If all goes according to plan, the league title should be within reach this season, continental football next year and thereafter the bar will be set higher - to become African champions once again.

The Travesty of African Football Broadcast Rights

Last week as Zambia succumbed to the might of Ghana's Black Stars to bring the country's world cup dreams to an abrupt halt, there was the distinct possibility that the match, eventually broadcast by Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, ZNBC, would not be televised due to the high cost of procuring the rights to show the game.

Sportfive, the Paris-based sports marketing agency owns the rights for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, having procured them from the Confederation of African Football, CAF. They demanded the sum of US$150,000 for the match, exactly the same amount ZNBC has paid to secure the rights for all 64 World Cup 2014 matches. Due to public pressure, ZNBC struggled but eventually managed to raise the amount.

Earlier in the year, ZNBC had to fork out the not-too-insignificant sum of 1-million Euro or US$1.55m for 32 matches of the Africa Cup of Nations. In the case of Nigeria, LC2, the company appointed by Sportfive to sell the Africa Cup of Nations tournament rights to African countries demanded the sum of 4.5 million Euro (US$6-million) from the west African country. Nigeria subsequently were unable to broadcast the matches on Free-To -Air TV, forcing fans to watch the matches on satellite TV in pubs, homes and improvised viewing centres.

It is clear that the rights being sold to African countries are not being sold at values that make commercial sense but that, given the fanaticism of African football fans for their teams, leaves countries with no choice but to pay whatever is demanded by the rights holders. African countries are being forced to pay

sums that they could never hope to recoup through sales of advertising on their TV platforms. This renders the price of the product way beyond its true market value.

Either the government or companies are arm-twisted into paying these abnormally inflated fees to prevent a public uproar that wouldn't go down well politically.

Until broadcasters stand their ground and refuse to be extorted the daylight robbery of their coffers will continue unabated.

Where Have All The Fans Gone?

Football on the African continent will always be the number one sport. Just look at the incredible levels of excitement when countries play their Africa or World Cup qualifying matches. The return of the continent's top players from their bases all across the world is a sure sign for millions of football's followers to come out and fanatically root for their countries.

The same cannot be said for the domestic league's around the continent, with a only handful of team's able to fill their grounds when they take to the field for the matches that are the bread and butter of local football.

Since African players began to catch the eye of league's beyond the continent's shores, there has been a steady departure of talent, firstly beginning with the more established stars, but latterly including players who show the first sign of potential, even barely out of their teens. This player-drain has depleted African football of its best talents.

This, alongside several other factors, among them the advent of satellite television that beams the best football from around the world directly into our living rooms, means that local football has become the second or even third choice option for African football followers.

Couple this with dilapidated infrastructure, poor ablution facilities, violence, drug use (marijuana smoking in the stands) and one begins to understand why domestic football’s following has been in decline across Africa for over two decades.

With north African football in turmoil after the political uprising there in the last two years, west African football ravaged by match rigging, poor refereeing, southern and east African football not competitive, the local game looks doomed to go through many more years of stagnation.

The once popular African Champions League has lost its appeal and is of interest only to the supporters of the teams that play in it while the rest of Africa pays no attention. Even Africa's flagship tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, has seen poor crowds at the the last three tournaments, the only exception being the home teams matches and the final itself, as the continent's top players go through the motions looking as if they would rather be somewhere else.

With African football's leadership focused mainly around the national team and its lucrative trips through which they generate thousands of dollars in allowances and upkeep money, it is no surprise that the less lucrative parts of the game are ignored. Football development, despite its importance in sustaining the game, is disregarded or ignored simply because there is little money to be made from it. True, there has been some progress commercially for African football, but again most of the sponsorship money has been channelled to the upper reaches of the game. The true state of African football can only be truly measured when taken in comparision with the rest of the world. There is no better barometre than the FIFA World Cup. To date no African team has progressed beyond the quarter final. At the last World Cup the best African performance came from Ghana who were the only African team to get beyond the group stage.  Only by fixing the domestic game can the national teams perform better. African football needs to be better run commercially to enable players to stay a home longer so that bigger crowds are attracted, domestic televised football becomes more attractive and sponsors then open up their pockets for a product that is more appealing to the audiences they are constantly seeking.