It’s been a while since my last blog entry and so I thought I’d update you on what’s been happening here, especially as some of you have been asking me how the African Nations’ Cup has been going over the last couple of weeks. Well, lets just say, I’m very pleased that as a current resident of Zambia, the Zambian National football team managed to qualify through to the Quarter finals last week after a very tight match with Gabon on Thursday where Zambia managed to defeat their opponets by 2 goals to 1.
It was a tight match, and very exciting, especially as it was such a crucial match – (if Zambia were to finish with a draw, they would have been knocked out of the tournament there and then).
The win surprised many Zambians. Everywhere I went, my neighbours, colleagues, friends and even people at the markets were all surprised that Zambia even qualified for the tournament. Unlike the popular members of the previous Zambian team, (who all tragically died in a plane crash whilst travelling during the last African Nations Cup tournament), the players from the current squad appear to be weak contendors in the popularity stakes as their performances over the last couple of years have done very little to encourage great support from fans who are all still in mourning from the loss of their great team.
Despite the great performance last Thursday, their hope at being crowned champions of Africa took a blow last night as they crashed out of the tournament after being defeated by strong contenders Nigeria during a penalty shoot out. After watching so many penalty shoots outs where England sadly lose, I was gutted to experience the same thing all over again whilst watching Zambia crumble during their last goal attempt, which was sadly deflected by the resilient Nigerian goalkeeper.
Despite the loss, the few Zambians (that had made it out to watch the football ) were cheering and dancing because they couldn’t believe that Zambia had even qualified for the Cup let alone had managed to achieve Quarter Final Status.
Hopefully, with the perfornance demonstrated at this year’s African Nations Cup, it will be enough to re-ignite some sparks of hope that one day the Zambian team will be great! Personally, I’m amazed to see that in Zambia there seems to be so much more support for English Premiership teams such as Chelsea and Manchester United but when it comes to their own National football team, many Zambians would rather stay in and watch something else other than the their own national football team…
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