Zambia: The Football Association of Zambia is back with their weekly President Column to share the weekly updates. They started by giving greetings to the football family. They expressed their excitement about this week’s offerings, with the Chipolopolo drawing closer to the commencement of their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign.
Zambia hosts Congo Brazzaville on November 17 before facing Niger away four days later. Chipolopolo coach Avram Grant and his technical team will be getting to work in the next few days ahead of the back-to-back matches.
Naturally, with the FIFA window opening on November 13, there is a bit of restriction in terms of the things they can do to activate their preparations.
The technical bench will provide the nitty-gritty of how the preparation will go, but, in the background, they have been building up to these two matches with the usual sense of prudence.
“Our local league is in full swing, which allows the technical bench to pick players that are fully engaged. We are lucky that we had two international friendly matches during the FIFA window as part of our wider commitment to keep our team engaged,” said FAZ.
“The only lingering sticky point is the final authority to play our match at home at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium. We have been collaborating with the government, who are the owners of the stadium, to ensure that we are fully compliant with the FIFA/CAF requirements.”
“With Heroes Stadium completely struck off the list of FIFA-approved stadia, we only have Levy Mwanawasa as our fall-back stadium. We remain optimistic that the final approval will be given once all the touch-ups are done in line with the set benchmarks by CAF.”
FAZ said, “they also intend to appeal to the public to turn up for the Chipolopolo as they keep their push for World Cup qualification alive. The fans will be crucial in inspiring the lads to victory. The women’s national team have already written a beautiful story with a historic World Cup qualification that came on the back of an Olympic appearance. We aim to sustain this beautiful story for our game.”
“Finally, FAZ ends this week’s discourse on a sombre note as we mourn freelance photojournalist Collins Kalenga. Kalenga was a permanent fixture at local and international matches and won innumerable awards in his career. We can only celebrate his life for the service he rendered to the game. As we lay him to rest today, we extend our condolences to his family and the journalism fraternity.”