It made interesting reading on BBC comments by current Chipolopolo coach Wedson Nyirenda who tried to explain Zambia’s spectacular fall from the top soon after winning the 2012 Africa Cup.
Mr Nyirenda believes the players had a poor attitude and grew big headed with that success and because of that, the team failed to perform at the next two Africa Cups, where the Chipolopolo did not get out of the group.
He also said that some players stopped respecting club coaches and also that most Zambian players’ levels of satisfaction is low and that four wins in a roll for them means they had great achievement.
While that is all true, the biggest problem that came with Zambia’s spectacular fall was the poor transition from an aged team to a young one.
Not just talking about the 2013 and 2015 Africa Cups, the results for the Chipolopolo have not been impressive in quite a while and also there was no policy direction from the FAZ on what they wanted.
When Honour Janza was named  Chipolopolo coach, he opted for a cut-throat system to change the team because the majority of those that won the Africa Cup, had gone passed their peak and were performing at a lower level.
This saw the dropping of the likes of Joseph Musonda, Isaac Chansa and most notable, captain Chris Katongo.
He brought in boys into the team like Boyd Mkandawire at the back but with little experience at a high level, the young ones were criticised for their luck luster performance. Results were poor and Janza got fired.
In came George Lwandamina, together with what looked as a change in transitioning policy as the lanky coach brought back the aging players Janza had decided to do away with.
At the CHAN tournament last year in Rwanda, Zambia scored just two goals as the Chipolopolo exited at quarter final stage. And the scorers of those two goals were Chris Katongo and Isaac Chansa.
Meanwhile, FAZ never said anything about what their policy was over team transitioning between the two coaching styles.
I Hope Mr. Wedson Nyirenda has been given guidelines on how the FAZ wants the Chipolopolo to move forward.
The team that won the Africa Cup was started in 2006 and the good thing was that then coach Kalusha Bwalya had been given a long term contract which allowed him to make wholesome changes to the team as FAZ explained that this was a young team that can not win every game.
He kept a few gaining players like Elijah Tana and Mark Sinyangwe but all were phased out inside one year and when Hervé Renard came, he carried on with the same young team which eventually won the 2012 Africa Cup.
There was vision and a clearly explained policy.
While it made good reading from Mr. Nyirenda about why Zambia failed to perform just after being crowned Africa kings, we can not keep talking about failure but instead, we can pick examples from moves made that led to Zambia winning the Africa Cup.
Wedson Nyirenda would have to make really bold decisions about his team and make the Qatar 2022 World Cup as Zambia main target and start developing a team for that because Russia 2018 looks beyond our reach.
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