Soccer pundit Bwezani Mbewe weighs-in on yesterday’s Nkana-Zanaco match
FOOTBALL Association of Zambia) (FAZ) and Ministry of Health (MoH) might need rise up and curtail this rather dangerous and unfortunate trend. We are treading on a very slippery slope. Otherwise, we will be having more problems than we probably anticipated.
One of the basic principles of football is fair Play. The goal of Fair Play is to recognize those teams that demonstrate a high level of positive play and respect for others. But what is emerging during this football restart is seemingly making people throw the principle through the window. And if we can’t respect that principle. We have no business playing the beautiful game.
This saga started on Saturday, when the Forest Rangers match against visitors Zanaco FC was stopped in tracks. What was thought to be a well set out restart of soccer in Zambia after a long lull caused by the Coronavirus pandemic turned murky. With a lot of uncertainties, and rumours led to the cancelation of the match. A lot of blame game trash cans where splashed all over the show. We appeared clueless.
That could have been tolerated if not condoned. All because it was a new phenomenon and therefore almost experimental.
Even though we playing this Russian roulette, it is a dangerous and catastrophic game. These parties involved in football, have families and friends and if we are not careful. In the name of football we might be escalating the already difficult situation for the front line officials in the fight against Covid-19.
The fair play principles is seemingly short changing Zanaco. The last couple of days seem to show a risky and dangerous trend pointing to the bankers.
The club took Covid19 swabs in Lusaka on the 11th of July, MoH never released results as labs in the capital are overwhelmed. Unfortunately, the team took the trip to Ndola. Luckily, from the healthy point of view the match was canceled. And all await the outcome of the decision by FAZ. On the fate of that particular game.
The team decided to stay on the Copperbelt since they had another match scheduled in the next few days.
They took a second set of swab in Ndola on Monday and results were surprisingly leaked to Nkana officials 40 minutes before the game my source review.
Meanwhile, Nkana who swabbed on Saturday results were not given or produced by the Ndola District Health. Yes, it is true Nkana EXCO confirmed that MoH did not issue the COVID-19 results.
Zanaco was basically weakened whilst Nkana played a full squad. The question is why did MoH and FAZ allow Nkana to feature players with unknown Covid19 results?
Kitwe Utd vs National Assembly game has been postponed because one team’s Covid19 results were not available or ready which must be a standard throughout?
Information filtering in Ndola also suggests that Forest Rangers results lacked authenticity. Those numbers could easily shut down Ndola and the league itself.
FAZ should do its job of ensuring Fair Play. In fact FAZ should be having test results of responsible clubs before sanctioning any match in future.
But wait a minute, maybe and just maybe, FAZ should consider shutting down this season because it doesn’t even look like we shall not have CAF games next season. This is due to many travel restrictions in many countries/quarantine procedures.
It’s a dead season…. No promotion and no relegation looks logical!!!
