Let’s revive grassroots football – Chitembeya

Ndola-based Chitembeya, the former FAZ executive committee member, noted that football standards in Zambia were on the decline as evidenced by Chipolopolo’s poor display on the international front. Chitembeya said the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) should facilitate the revival of youth football, school leagues and amateur structures. He recalled that youth, schools and amateur structures in the past used to produce quality players for the league and the National Team.

“Everyone is blaming the coaches and the players over declining football standards, but people are not looking at the elephant in the room. The structures or the systems, what is being put in place to make sure we have the right players at our disposable. You see, previously our coaches didn’t even have coaching qualifications when they were producing Kalusha Bwalya, Godfrey ‘Ucar’ Chitalu but now we have the most qualified coaches and now we don’t have a single star player in the league,” Chitembeya said.

He said Zambia is no longer producing star players with the caliber of legends Kalusha Bwalya or Godfrey ‘Ucar’ Chitalu. “You can’t name a match winner in the league, a star defender, a star striker or a star goalkeeper. We have this problem because of the poor system.

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The production line is not producing abundant stars players anymore. It is the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) that has to go back to the drawing board and bring back those systems that used to produce star players. We don’t have the reserve sides at clubs; we don’t have competitive schools league or strong amateur league,” Chitembeya said.

“When you disregard the system that gave you star players and then you think you will get players and win by miracle or magic then you have lost it. We have to get back to where we came from. The problem is when people get more educated that’s when things get worse.

Those coaches that produced star players were of humble beginnings and humble coaching qualifications but had the knowhow. Now we are more educated, we have got degrees, but we can’t produce a single star player.” “Until we go back to the old structure, we are not going anywhere. A long time our football structures were so strong such that they could produce a player from Division Three or One to play for the National Team,” he said. Chitembeya cautioned against copying foreign football strategies.

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