Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president Andrew Kamanga has refused being involved in the “no handshake” witnessed in Chipolopolo’s AFCON 2017 Qualifier against Kenya. Kamanga explained that it was a CAF directive and not his own doing. This is according to a post on the FA’s Official facebook page and monitored by Soka25east.com.

The FA president has also reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to uplifting the standards of football in Zambia and has dismissed as malicious claims from known FAZ detractors that there were no official match balls for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Kenya.

“I don’t think we need to respond to such things. For example, you are asking me about no handshakes before the match. But that was a directive from CAF and nothing to do with me as FAZ president.

“Can you see how these lies are being fanned? Suffice to say that the Association provided everything necessary for the match to go on as
an Africa Cup qualifier including match balls.”

“You see elections were in March. But some people have failed to move on. Now we need to concentrate on taking our football to a new level. We have a 4 year mandate to preside over the
affairs of football in Zambia.

“They accused me of being a failure. Even now they are saying the same things. I would urge the fans to be patient and check the motives of those
who have made attacking myself and the FAZ executive based on lies as their personal calling.

“We are going through a tough transition. Since winning the Africa Cup in 2012 our fortunes have dwindled. Some of the poor performances we are seeing today are an accumulation of factors from
back then.”

“This is what we want to address. We have taken responsibility and we are focused on doing that. We want the team to qualify to the World Cup in
Russia.

“But without the support of key stakeholders this dream becomes a huge challenge,” Kamanga said.