By SANDRA MWILA –

MATERO United Football Club life member Solomon Kapona has announced his candidature to contest the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) presidency at next year’s elective Annual General Meeting.
Kapona was disqualified from standing in 2008 after failing to meet the requirements to stand as FAZ president during the elections that saw Kalusha Bwalya beat incumbent Teddy Mulonga and Hanif Adams for the position.
He said in a statement yesterday said the current leadership lacks distinct strategies to embrace inclusiveness among the various stakeholders.
Kapona said the FAZ has failed to attract quality sponsorship owing to a moribund secretariat thereby lamentably failing to bring on board the corporate world willing to sponsor age group football.
“The FAZ secretariat continues to act as a begging bowl and without any tangible ideas to drive football as a business entity, that in the absence of government assistance, FAZ is as good as extinct. This was well illustrated during the tenure of the late Michael Mwape,” he said.
Kapona said while he was agreeing that football administration is part time, there was need for FAZ to reposition itself into a viable business entity in which administrators would be paid adequate allowances for them to expand their time for the improvement of the game.
“It is no wonder that a president of an important organisation resides in another country leaving administration of football to chance,” he said.
He said FAZ needs to seriously consider the reintroduction of the National Football League (NFL) which should be strictly involved in the planning of local league structures from amateur to the Super Division as was the case before.
Kapona said introducing the NFL will reduce the work load on FAZ which will be left to be more involved with the various national teams.
Meanwhile, Kapona joins football administrators Henschel Chitembeya and Andrew Kamanga in announcing their bid to challenge incumbent Kalusha for the FAZ top post.