Zambian football Administrator Mwansa Kapyanga talked to soka25east.com about youth football,age cheating and the current Football Association of Zambia’s tenure thus far in a question and answer session below.
SOKA: Welcome to this edition of Question and Answer Mwansa Kapyanga!
MWANSA: Thank you!
SOKA: Let’s get into the nitty gritties,tell us who you are; Who is Mwansa Kapyanga?
MWANSA: I’m a Kabwe born and bread that’s why I support Kabwe Warriors, even though I no longer stay in Central Province. I left Kabwe in 2011 and that’s when I got directly involved with local football.
From 2012 to December,2015 I was team manager of Kasama United Youth Academy by then in division 2 and helped them win promotion to the restructured Football Association of Zambia division 1 Zone 3.
Am currently the Secretary of Kasama United Youth Academy.
SOKA: That’s intriguing.Being an Administrator of a youthful club,can you tell us some the challenges you face at grassroot football level.
MWANSA: I think financial Support is the biggest challenge.
With finances comes good training facilities,better trainers and better training equipments.
SOKA: Who should be held responsible for this and what are you doing as Administrators to secure financial support from the cooperate world?
MWANSA: I think the responsibility is for Administrators at club level and Football Association at national level.
As clubs we should have a good proposal coupled with a good story to tell the sponsors.
The FA should at least show some interest in Youth football.We have a lot of academies across Zambia but they are turned a blind eye and no one seem to be interested to improve grassroot football.If the FA show interest and confidence in supporting academies they can help or get sponsors on board to support a countrywide league that would entice other sponsors.
As of now most Youth academies survive or run on a few individuals who actually should be appreciated for helping to develop grassroot football.
SOKA: Do you think the FA have neglected Youth Football?
MWANSA: Definitely,In fact the FA have never shown major interest nor put any effort to make sure we have a good foundation at Youth level.
Their major interest has been dealing with already ripe players.
SOKA: Do you think that’s precisely our National football team is struggling of late?
MWANSA: If you look at the team that won 2012 AFCON,it was maintained at 2013 and 2015 AFCON.
Do you think we could have managed to compete with countries that were busy recruiting hungry and young players? No!
That’s one of the reasons why we failed to qualify for 2017 AFCON because we remained stagnant after winning AFCON 2012.
SOKA: We have a new executive at Football Association of Zambia.How can you rate their tenure thus far and how is your relationship compared to their predecessors?
MWANSA: It’s too early to rate this EXCO but they seem to be professional compared to the previous Exco.Let’s give them a few months and then we can rate them objectively.
My relationship with the current Executive is better compared to the previous Exco mostly because the current guys have time to listen.
SOKA: Our U17 National team was disqualified at Cosafa Championship in Mauritius for age fraud. Whose negligence do you think it was? It’s in the mainstream media that MRI was done to these players prior to the tournament.This brings questions like how did MRI escape them,is this method reliable to curb age cheating?
MWANSA: The embarrassing fact is that we were caught age cheating.On who to blame,I think the entire technical team at the moment.Also the Administrators share the blame because they know most of these players and they could have advised the technical team that they are overage.
It was on national TV that MRI was conducted on these players
but it’s either the machines were defective or not accurate or somewhere somehow the was human interference.But again as a coach you can tell how a boy and a man handles himself during training so people should have been a little been more responsible.
SOKA: Finally,Do you have an desire of serving under the Football Association of Zambia or run for the Presidency in future?
MWANSA: I would be humbled to serve my country in any way as long as am contributing in taking Zambian football to another level.
SOKA: Well,there you have it Africa! Thank you for staying glued to this interview and many thanks goes to our guest Mwansa Kapyanga.On behalf of soka25east.com editorial team I wish him and Kasama United Youth Academy the best.Stay blessed!
