ZESCO United Football Club Team Ya Ziko
The 2019/2020 FAZ/MTN Super League season finally came to its premature conclusion yesterday with the Wusakile boys, Nkana crowned champions for the 13th time after Forest Rangers failed to sail past Zanaco FC in a rescheduled fixture that ended 0-0.
The crowning of Nkana as 2019/2020 Super League champions saw ZESCO United abdicate its position as the ‘Big Boys’ of the Zambian game, a ritual they have enjoyed for the last three season.
Such was ZESCO United’s dominance that the Football Association of Zambia decided to permanently award the Super League title to TeamYaziko.
However, this was a controversial football season full of knee-jerking decisions that have left football stakeholders with an unforgettable hangover.
Like the year 2020, this is arguably a football season in the history of the Zambian game that football administrators, players, sponsors, and fans will quickly want to forget.
Here was a beautiful football script blighted in its tracks by a disease that no one imagined could find itself dominating football proceedings on and off the pitch.
Coronavirus forced the Zambian FA to prematurely end the 2019/2020 football season at week 27 instead of week 34 following the surge in coronavirus cases.
The final log table tells the whole story of how close this contest was: Nkana, champions-elect have 50 points with Forests Rangers lying on the second position with 50points but behind on goal difference.
Green Eagles and Napsa Stars both left it at 48 points each, with the former occupying the third position on superior goal difference. 2018/2019 Super League Champions, ZESCO United lie in the fifth position on 47 points, missing out on CAF competitions for the first time in over 8 years of domination.
The premature end to the season has immensely contributed to ZESCO United’s chances of winning its 9th league title and further spoiled the team’s possible chances of qualifying for next season’s CAF competitions.
However, for ZESCO United Football club management, this is a crucial time to re-strategize the way forward for a football club that has dominated the Zambian game in recent years.
ZESCO United Chief Executive Officer(CEO), Richard Mulenga expressed disappointment with the club’s failure to retain the Championship and to qualify for next seasons CAF competitions. Mulenga has further bemoaned the way the league has been managed in the advent of COVID-19.
“It is unfortunate especially if you consider the way we started this league, we won our first 10-matches and somewhere along the way we lost. I think you have read the concerns from Power Dynamos, Chief Executive Officer. We are of the same view that several mistakes were made in the way the league was resumed. Equally, there have been some mistakes in the way it has been concluded.
21 points are too many, they are a lot. Anything can happen in seven games. To pick a winner when the difference is too little? If we take a leaf from the English Premier League, before the pandemic, Liverpool only needed six points from 24 but they still didn’t end the league and declare them a winner or say that play two more games and will declare a winner,” Mulenga said.
The ZESCO United Chief Executive Officer also called on Premier League clubs to take full responsibility for the Super League operations.
“I think maybe it’s time the CEO’s of the Zambian Premier League clubs became proactive and started running this league as should be the case. It should have been the Premier League to determine how we were going to start and finish this league.
Unfortunately, these mistakes have been made. I hope that the Association can admit that they have made mistakes and not take a defensive position. They ought to learn from the mistakes they have made.”
REBUILDING HAS ALREADY STARTED
ZESCO United’s failure to return the title and to qualify for next year’s CAF competitions has been received with mixed feeling from the club’s stakeholders especially its faithful supporters.
The club’s CEO has shed some light on the club’s current plans, especially in the areas of player recruitment: “The process of rebuilding starts on Monday(Today). We already know what some of the issues are, we just need to start addressing them. Some of them, we started addressing them even before the league was closed because of the pandemic.
First of all, our rebuilding is being addressed two-fold. Number one, ZESCO United has for some time been formulating club policies. We have several policies in place. For example, we have a policy for player status, policy for technical. So one of the ways will address this, is by the policy.
One of them is to ensure that no contract shall be given to a player who will remain at the club beyond a certain age. Unfortunately, what happened was that, because of the transition in the league, player’s contracts were expiring at a time where you could not bring in other players because we were going to be short of players if we didn’t renew.
What we did was to offer shorter-term contracts to sitting players because of the transition. Those whose contracts had expired but were above a certain age, we offered them shorter contracts so that we could give room to rebuild.”
REBUILDING CHALLENGES
As ZESCO United prepares for a new look, the club Chief Executive Officer is well aware of the hurdles that can thwart progress.
“ZESCO United is a team that thinks in the long term, that’s the reason you see that we don’t change coaches here and there. We want stability at the club, so even this rebuilding process, we will want to win the league next season but we also need to be mindful that rebuilding takes some time. we will not be in a hurry certainly to just pick players all over to try and regain the championship, that’s not the solution.
Mulenga is also mindful of the need for the club to take advantage of the club’s developmental teams that continue to produce great talent year in year out.
“We are looking at it in the long term and one of the issues goes back to policy. We have several teams that are scattered around the country which we call developmental teams. We want to ensure that we are tapping into these teams, bringing talent through.
Certain policies have been put in place to make sure that we address this gap that has been there. We have to admit that there has been a gap. There are about five teams and we spend money on them, yet players hardly come through to ZESCO United. We are trying to address this so that we give players from our developmental teams a chance to break into the first team,” Mulenga concluded.
Author: Desmond Katongo
Well said Sir.
Thats great to lead,it makes sense to know that our club is making progressive way of making it happen come next season, all the best as you start rebuilding the team.
Kindly reinforce by buying good players and offload old players we can’t rebuild by putting our focus on feeder teams which are also not doing well in their respective leagues, Football these days is about investing good moneys i.e buying good players we have kept way old players too much that has eat us up plus administrative issues and poor technical tactics as well as fitness.
We have Young Edward Phiri the guy has never been used in the midfield to help abena Kondwani Mtonga player rotation is poor look at how Zanaco reinforced we too must take a similar approach and step not depending on feeder clubs that are finishing 14th position in Eden league.
From my analysis the club is not ready to buy new players I have no idea if its financial reasons may good sponsors come in to help the team.