Many reasons to travel for Cosafa

Legend . . . Godfrey Chitalu

Lusaka, Ndola, Kabwe and Kitwe have been confirmed as host cities for the Cosafa Cup playing in Zambia from July 6-21. The tournament this year will have Cecafa guests in Kenya and Tanzania.

The two east African nations will join Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mauritius and Seychelles in the group phase.

Hosts Zambia and higher ranked South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi have been given a bye to the knockout round.

All group phase matches which will be played from July 6-11 will be hosted in Lusaka and Kabwe. The two cities will also host matches at the quarterfinal knockout stage which will be played as double headers at Nkoloma (Lusaka) and Godfrey Chitalu (Kabwe) stadiums on July 13 and 14.

Copperbelt towns of Kitwe and Ndola will only host knockout matches from the quarterfinal and semifinal stages, from July 16.

Why I am writing this? Well, apart from the fact draw for the 2013 Cosafa Cup takes place tomorrow (May 3) in Lusaka on Friday, I want to travel to the tournament. This especially so for the matches in Kitwe and Ndola.

The Copperbelt has fabled stories about football in the southern region. Apart from historically providing Zambia with its finest talent since the 1960s, the region has more legends in other spheres of life which one would need to supple in ones lifetime.

It is for this reason that the trip to Zambia will not be about the beautiful game alone but all that is beautiful about the beauty of that country – and the flow of the most urban river in Africa, the Kafue River. Apart from the copper, this majestic river is like a thread holding the Copperbelt together, linking its major towns as if it were a highway!

Footballwise, no name rises higher than that of Godfrey Chitalu. Though Kabwe has renamed its main stadium after this legend, Chitalu was however born in the Copperbelt town of Luanshya. It is also the home town of Orlando Pirates striker and Zambian international Collins Mbesuma.

Chitalu holds his Zambian national team scoring record and was voted footballer of the year in that country five times. He was just 45 when he died in the infamous air crash off Gabon in April 27, 1993. He had just been named national coach that year, after retiring from an 11-year spell as a Kabwe Warriors player, which included a highly disputed but widely acclaimed 107 goals in one season in 1972.

This and many other stories about Zambia are already giving me sleepless nights thinking about July.

Am I going to resign or take unpaid leave to realize the dream? Time will tell, but this is one trip that cannot be missed for all good reasons imaginable!

Comments

Rest in peace Zet, thanks for the good times

Legends. . . Zithulele Sinqe runs ahead of another roadrunning super star Willie Mtolo in 1986 Each time when I drive past ERPM in Boksburg, along Rondebult Road, one name springs to mind: Ernest Seleke. The association comes from the memory of Seleke running in a vest with ERPM emblazoned across the chest area. Back then, in the 1980s, I did not even know that ERPM was an abbreviation for a mine, and that the initials stood for East Rand Propriety Mine. To me ERPM was Seleke, not the gold mine it actually was. Stock, as the lithe running machine was known, was a marvel to watch on TV during that time of my schooldays. However, he was not alone among the crop of SA runners who were nurtured and sponsored by the mines to excel in their sport – both on track and on the road – at that time. There were many products of the mines and parastatals but I can immediately single out Xolile Yawa, Matthew Temane, Gibeon Moshaba, Matthew Batswadi, Ben Choeu and much later Zithulele Sin...

Broos returns respect and the swag to Bafana

When Hugo Broos was announced in May 2021 as the new manager of the South African national football team, the news was received by sneers and jeers if not completely ignored by some of those it affected the most - the SA soccer fraternity. At the time Bafana Bafana, the national team, had not long been labelled a "bunch of losers" by the sports minister Fikile Mbalula. His words cut like a blunt knife, even though the truth is that Bafana were at the time hopeless and lacked confidence. It was fair-game for anyone, including the lowest-ranked nations, to meet Bafana because the chances of scoring a victory over the SA team were real and attainable. So, more than the sports minister, the nation was despondent over Bafana circumstances. Even Broos appointment, despite his known success on the continent, was slammed as that of an old man chasing an easy retirement fund. It was a tough job from the start for the Belgian - having to rouse the players from a comatose of low sel...

The enemy within at Kaizer Chiefs

The new Premier Soccer League in South Africa is in its third week and already there's trouble at one of the biggest clubs, Kaizer Chiefs. The upheaval stems from within, thanks to the club's restless supporters. Restless is an understatement to describe a largely belligerent horde ready to trash and clobber, as they showed once again at Mbombela on Sunday 20 August after losing to TS Galaxy. Chiefs are not winning matches because they are goal-shy, scoring just 1 goal in their opening three matches of the league. That is not the scoring rate to win football matches. But instead of directing their anger to the team's forwards, and to some extent the rest of the outfield players, the supporters are blaming the coach and the goalkeeper. Chiefs No 1 keeper Brandon Peterson is a having a torrid time from the fans, despite his form saving the team from serious embarassment game after game. Against Galaxy last week a stopped four certain goal attempts, and earlier in the month...

Sport Matters

Search This Blog