The Zambia Institute for Sustainable Development Football Club (ZISD FC) midfielder was supposed to travel to South Africa for a two-week trial yesterday, but she was unable to do so because she is said to have gone awol on her club.
Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies FC had facilitated her movement to South Africa and provided her with the necessary travel requirements, such as air tickets and lodging, but the 20-year-old Zambian midfielder was nowhere to be found, and neither were her handlers, according to ZISD FC.
In an exclusive interview with BolaNews, ZISD General Secretary Elijah Lungu expressed disappointment at the turn of events and urged Katongo and her handlers to maintain professionalism.
“She was supposed to have gone yesterday but she didn’t go, and everything was paid for,” bemoaned the club official. “According to her manager, she is said to be injured but then we have tried to engage her but we aren’t getting any response. There is just a lot of unprofessionalism because someone told me that she is not injured; in fact, if she was injured, we have doctors at the club who are supposed to assess her.”
Lungu also disclosed that Katongo has gone AWOL and warned that the club might take disciplinary action against the player and her handlers.
“Even her agent doesn’t answer his phone, nor has he written to us as the club on the way forward for her; the only thing that I’ve heard or reported from her is her saying that she’s not interested in the move, and that’s very unprofessional, and whoever is advising her, they will just get the player banned; it’s sounding light now, but obviously even Zambian women’s football is subject to FIFA rules; if we wanted, we could have taken her to FIFA a long time ago,” Lungu told BolaNews.
“Our advice to her is to come back to ZISD and play football if she doesn’t want to go to Sundowns. I don’t know why someone can fail to advise her on the basic rules of Football.”
Lungu went on to say that Katongo’s handlers had kept both ZISD and Sundowns in the dark about the player’s whereabouts.
“The agents are not answering the calls from Sundowns, not even my calls as ZISD, so that’s what Sundowns were complaining about—that their calls were not being answered.
“They have talked to the father, and the family is okay. But the father told them to go and talk to the agent, so the problem here is the agent, and again, the main issue here is that they are not punishing ZISD but they are punishing the player and her future,” He concluded.
Katongo was invited for trials at Sundowns two weeks ago, but the news was met with widespread criticism from fans and pundits, who argued that the player, who was a key member of the Zambia women’s team that qualified for the 2023 FIFA World Cup after reaching the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations semifinals for the first time, did not need to be subjected to trials because she is a proven international midfielder.
Katongo is one of the local players who have been invited to camp to join the Copper Queens in their preparations for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which begins on July 20th in New Zealand, and she is expected to make the final squad.
