Unless Zesco United’s Enock Sakala scores a hat-trick this weekend, the Zambian Super League will have a Golden Boot winner who left the stage five months ago: Freddy Michael Kouablan.
Kouablan set the stage alight in the first stanza of the season, scoring 14 goals for Green Eagles to shoot to the summit of the top scorer’s chart. He remains unmatched with this tally.
His closest rival is Sakala, who has scored 12 goals, trailed by Andrew Phiri of FC MUZA, who stands on 11 goals. It’s sad that despite having ample time and opportunities, no striker has managed to surpass or even equal Kouablan’s goal count by the time I sat to put my thoughts on paper.
This fact alone raises questions about the quality of strikers currently in the league. Before you accuse me for being a hater, I am not the first one to express concern over the blunt strikers we have in the league.
Wada Wada said the same thing
Among the first people to call out our goal-shy topmen is Zanaco coach Wedson Nyirenda, a man who I have heard and read knows a thing or two about putting the ball in the back of the net.
“It is obvious, we do not have strikers,” Nyirenda said back in January, “It is Zambia’s problem…a big problem we have in Zambia. I may use a bad word for the strikers we have in Zambia.”
After much restraint, Nyirenda called Zambian strikers ‘cowards’.
“The strikers are cowards; they don’t want to take chances. How do you expect to score goals when you don’t want to place yourself in goal-scoring positions?
“Nobody is initiating that move that he wants to score. The goals we are seeing. You see that guy [Kouablan] who has come from Cameroon [Ivory Coast] has taken advantage…he has seen that ‘these people are not doing it, so I have to do it’,” he said.
Nyirenda, a former Chipolopolo coach, said players need to start taking things personally.
This problem is now affecting Avram Grant on the national team.
Grant is struggling to assemble back-up strikers that can rival the likes of Patson Daka or step up when the Leicester City man is having a bad day at the office.
“We don’t have enough strikers,” Grant said in an exclusive interview with BolaNews, “We have Patson Daka and we need more natural strikers…”
I hope our strikers will reflect on their performances during off season and rise to the challenge next season.
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