By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA –
FINANCIALLY-STRETCHED Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) has failed to camp the senior national women football team which is next weekend scheduled to play Tanzania in the 2015 All-Africa Games (AAG) qualifier.
And the Zambia Under-23 men coach Fighton Simukonda has urged his players not to be intimidated by Nigeria’s good footballing record when they clash next week in an AAG qualifying tie.
FAZ had announced last week that the Albert Kachinga-coached women team will enter camp on Sunday to prepare for the first leg game against Tanzania.
But by yesterday FAZ was still struggling with logistics and stretched finances to camp team, whose bitter post-2014 African Women Championship memories are still fresh.
However, FAZ general secretary, Kasengele yesterday insisted the team would go into camp today and attributed the delay to logistical challenges which included finding the team accommodation.
“We had a challenge of finding them accommodation as you know the men Under-23 are using the Technical Centre. We can’t mix girls and boys there so we had to find them a place elsewhere.
“Right now we have a team working on that. We should be able to secure that and camp them tomorrow,” he said.
When asked whether the delay was ‘eating’ into preparations time, Kasengele said FAZ had always kept two weeks as a period of camping and that idea was the same for the women team.
This means Kachinga will have just 10 days to prepare his team for the game against a tough Tanzania which Zambia laboured to get past in its quest for a place at the 2014 Africa Women Championship held in Namibia.
FAZ has seen its various teams take part in international competitions which is proving a huge financial drain at Football House.
In the Chipolopolo’s run up to the Africa Cup of Nations hosted in Equatorial Guinea, FAZ also had in camp the Under-17 team preparing for the Africa Under-17 championships which in Niger recently.
As the Under-17 was leaving for the continental championship, the Under-20 also entered camp to get ready for the ongoing Africa Under-20 Championship in Senegal.
In the midst of all these camping, the Under-23 was involved in some sporadic camping which went fully-fledged when the Under-20 left for Senegal.

. Simukonda

And  Simukonda said he had been psyching the under-23 players not to get intimidated by Nigeria’s footballing record.
“Nigeria is always a tough ask and they play good football but we have psyched the players not to be intimidated in any way because they are just as good if not even better, they are just a team like us,” Simukonda said in an interview after a morning training session at Heroes Stadium in Lusaka yesterday.
He was confident of making it past Nigeria at this stage and eventually qualifying to the 2015 AAG which will be held in Congo Brazzaville in September.
Simukonda also said Zesco United and Power Dynamos players who were released to play the Charity Shield would not join camp until after featuring for their clubs in this weekend’s respective CAF inter-club competitions.
The Zesco players are Bernard Mapili, Chishimba Changala and Bornwell Silengo while Power has Julius Situmbeko, Billy Mutale and Larry Bwalya.
Zesco will host AC Kaloum of Guinea in Ndola in a CAF Champions League tie while Power will be away to Gabonnese side CF Mounana in the Confederation Cup.
Meanwhile to avoid a clash of training programmes, the local senior Chipolopolo monthly camping has been put off with FAZ stating that the majority of players in that team were the ones at Under-23 and Under-20.