FAZ president Andrew Kamanga has disclosed that FIFA will be sending a delegation to Zambia on a fact-finding mission in the aftermath of the aborted annual general meeting.
And Kamanga says Chipolopolo coach Avram Grant is the best person to provide insights to the inclusions and omissions for his 27-member provisional squad ahead of the Chipolopolo’s back-to-back FIFA World Cup qualifiers against Morocco and Tanzania.
Featuring on SuperSport’s flagship show, Soccer Africa on Thursday night, Kamanga said FIFA had indicated it would head to Zambia to assess the situation that led to the indefinite postponement of the annual general meeting after two non-members obtained an injunction to halt the congress.
“As we speak today, the injunction has been taken out of court and FIFA indicated last week that they are sending a mission to come on a fact-finding mission to understand exactly what happened,” Kamanga said.
The FAZ chief said he would not answer for FIFA whether Zambia was closer to having a Normalisation Committee or not but was confident that the circumstances were different from cases where such punishments were imposed.
“In this case, it is quite a new phenomenon because we are dealing with third parties. It is almost like we are now moving away from your typical government interference to now get to a point where now even a guy on the street as long as they have got the capacity can go and stop a congress. I think the same happened in Kenya, these are non-government officials,” he said.
“As far as government is concerned, they are not the ones involved, it is third parties, so this is where now this is becoming more interesting. We will see how it will play out.”
He added: “I can’t answer for FIFA, but what I know from my experience sitting on the FIFA Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee, we are the ones who obviously evaluate these types of cases. But what typically motivates the installation of the Normalisation Committee is when there is failure by the executive to function, unlike in our case which obviously is a third party issue, so there is always a difference.”
Kamanga said the inability to hold the AGM as directed by FIFA remained problematic for Zambia.
“The underlying issues still remain the directive and the violation that we did not proceed with the congress,” he said.
Kamanga said that he never imagined he would ever be arrested on a football matter for alleged criminal offences.
“A lot has happened in Zambia in the last one month. We had two interesting cases, one is a criminal matter where myself, the general secretary (Reuben Kamanga) and two club officials who had gone to the Africa Cup were jointly arrested,” he said.
“That is why the matter is yet to come up in court so beyond that I won’t be able to comment otherwise I will be cited for contempt.”
On the matter of player selection, Kamanga said the coach would address the matters around selection once the camp resumes after the weekend matches.
“The coach is actually going to have a press briefing when the team goes into camp, so he is better placed to explain who he has picked and why he has made those decisions. We can only give guidance,” he said.
“Of course, we are given the list when the decision is made. We don’t normally interfere but obviously there has been a backlash on two players. One is injured a Lameck (Banda) – he just went through a knee operation. He is one of our young and exciting players. Fashion (Sakala) again, in the Africa Cup, if you remember the game against Tanzania, he started from the bench together with Kings. Players are assessed based on the form, I think now he is in top form. He is scoring goals in his league so obviously the coach…this is a provisional squad. He could be back, he is still playing in the league, we are not privy to the details but the coach will be better placed to give answers.”
Kamanga said Grant had done reasonably well with the team, having met the target of Africa Cup of Nations qualification with the other target of world cup appearance on course.
“The minimum (target) for him was to qualify the team to AFCON, which he did and, obviously, to qualify the team to the World Cup. It is just these two – AFCON and World Cup. His contract comes to an end at the close of the year,” he said.
“We have to look at where we are coming from with the senior team. We missed three editions and Avram came in and qualified the team on top of the group, in a group where we had the eventual winners Ivory Coast. This was a good starting point, now we have a good point to make amends in the World Cup qualifiers.”
He added: “Sixty years after independence, we have never been to the World Cup. We think that we have a good opportunity. Of course, we have Morocco in front of us.”
Main Image: SABC Sport
