The Problem is Not Avram Grant
Calls for Avram Grant to be fired after Chipolopolos' calamitous 2025 CHAN campaign are offside.
The man who ended Zambia's AFCON drought with back-to-back qualifications has become a scapegoat for a problem he found.
Firstly, Zambia went to CHAN on a free ticket after the final qualifier opponents, Mozambique, withdrew in December due to protracted pre- and post-election unrest in that country.
Another fact that people forget is that it was also Zambia's first time back at CHAN since the 2020 edition.
Zambia failed to qualify for the 2022 tournament.
In contrast to that, Zambia were regional COSAFA zone champions in three of four finals in 2019, 2022 and 2023 before making an unprecedented back-to-back group stage exits in 2024 and 2025.
The 2024 and 2025 COSAFA Cup exits under Chisi Mbewe and Wedson Nyirenda respectively, were probably an ominous sign but classified as mere blips.
It was then that Grant was ordered to take charge of the CHAN team after Nyirenda was dropped from the 2025 assignment.
Grant inherited some of the most consistent players in the domestic league while probably 2 or 3 like Abraham Siankombo and John Soko 2nd consessions for Zesco United and Power Dynamos' gruelling preseason programme ahead of their respective September CAF Confederation Cup and CAF Champions League obligations.
Chipolopolo's team profile may not be the best but that's the reality of the benchmark of a local player we currently have in the FAZ Super League.
The quality of local players, particularly strikers, has been in decline since the early 2000s and several late bloomers like Jackson Mwanza and Winston Kalengo carrying the burden heading into 2015.
It will be very hard to find a Zambian-born striker over the last 26 years scoring 20 goals unless you top that tally with goals from cup competitions.
Thereafter, one just needs to look at the quantitative facts of the foreign origins of our FAZ Super League top scorers over the last 10 years where a homegrown talent averages 9 goals a season.
But the 2018 CHAN qualifiers and tournament gave us a little hope with the late Justin Shonga plus Lazarus Kambole but their respective moves to South Africa would prove the beginning of the end of that episode.
But that is not Zambia's only Achilles heel.
Since goalkeeper Kennedy Mweene retired during the COVID era in 2021, Chipolopolo has during this protracted transitional timeline, gone through half a dozen goalkeepers.
They include the forgotten Sebastian Mwange, the South African-born Cyril Mwenya Chibwe, Lawrence Mulenga, plus Mweene's long-serving and enduring understudy, Toaster Nsabata.
They also include cameos from Francis Mwansa and, just this month at CHAN Mr Willard Mwanza.
And post-COVID, it has become very hard to sit through a domestic game cup or league in anticipation of seeing sparks and some enterprising football.
But what continues to draw crowds at Nkana and Power Dynamos including Kabwe Warriors, is the tradition of savouring an experience thanks to the club's historic football legacies.
One underlying factor of a drop in the quality of local talent is the influx of foreign players and the lack of a robust quota to help nurture young talent.
Sadly, football is not about patriotism but results and these clubs have an obligation to justify the vast amounts of funding they get from their institutional and parastatal shareholder/owners.
To sum up these clubs' recruitment policies, using a colleague's favourite phrase, "We are not the Red Cross".
Then there is the technical factor.
The last 25 years have seen a leap in the education of coaches.
Coaching qualifications are now a regulatory requirement with levels of grade certification dictating in which football division a trainer can coach.
In short, we have more qualified coaches than at any time in the history of Zambian football.
But has certification reflected into quality on the pitch? No.
And there again lies the question: what is the ratio of quality over quantity coaching?
But sadly, even the quality coaches are hamstrung in the development agenda by the overbearing influence of their intrusive employers.
On the bright side, an impressive 9 coaches, including an Egyptian, have steered clubs to the group stages of CAF Interclub competition.
To conclude, if we are going to have to hold another symposium after the weeklong gathering of September 2024, it should be very streamlined.
It must be exclusively for coaches, with clearly defined objectives and not another garnished industrial-scale meet and greet photo opportunity we had a year ago.
I will call the other stakeholders football politicians to stay out of it.
The football politicians job should just be to provide their administrative and financial strengths needed to make this thing work.
Meanwhile, the research question should be based on what ex-Chipolopolo coach Sven Vandenbroeck prophetically outlined in 2018 and I will end by directly quoting him.
"I think we need a law to say you need at least three Under-20 players to feature. We have to expose them a little faster in the local league,” Vandenbroeck said.
"The gap (on quality) in the Under-20 is growing.
"So we need a minimum of two Under-20 players; it is better than limiting some foreigners."