Bruce Mwape’s tenure as Zambia’s women coach came to an end on Friday when Swiss coach Nora Hauptle was introduced as the new coach.
Nora’s first taste of senior management came in 2020 when she was appointed coach for the German side SC Sand.
Most people took notice of Nora during her spell as Ghana’s coach. Her biggest achievement there was ending the Black Queens’ six-year wait for a WAfCON qualification.
The temptation to ditch Ghana for Zambia was too much to resist for Nora. In her own admittance, she had been eying Mwape’s job for a while.
“It was always my wish for me to take over this team because there are some many fantastic players, there is so much potential I see in this team,” the 41-year-old remarked during her unveiling.
For all his faults, Mwape, Nora’s predecessor, moulded a team that any coach in the women’s game would envy today.
Between 1998 and 2016, the team had only qualified for one major tournament, the 2014 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAfCON), where they performed poorly, finishing at the bottom of Group A with just one point.
However, a transformation occurred under Mwape’s guidance. He does not take much credit for it, but he is the one who turned this group of underdogs into a decent team that regularly qualifies for major tournaments. Under Mwape, the team has qualified for three WAfCON tournaments, two Olympic Games, and one World Cup.
With Mwape having run his race, it is now time for Nora, a qualified athletics coach, to take the baton and get this team over the line.
“Results Will Not Come Easy” – Coach Nora.
We have heard that Nora’s immediate task is to lead Zambia to its maiden WAfCON title this July.
“We have appointed coach Nora with clear targets,” Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president Andrew Kamanga said at the unveiling, “she should take the team to the next level, one of the targets we have set is that we need to win the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations coming up in July.”
Judging by her coaching CV, the Copper Queens’ coaching role is Nora’s biggest assignment yet. Thankfully, she is not naive; she knows that the team is far from being a finished article, and minting gold at the first time of asking will not be easy.
“Results are not just falling from the sky, it is important that we have a lot of preparation… it is very easy to announce ‘we want to win the tournament’ but we need to know how we get there,” she said.
To reach the top, Zambia will first have to navigate their way through Group A, which includes Morocco, their neighbours the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Senegal. They will then need to advance through the quarterfinals and semifinals.
“We need to create a playing idea, working on our principles, working on our values, how do we want to act? These are to me, performance indicators in which we need to work and when we do this work probably, it will end up in good results,” she said.
Nora seems well aware that the road ahead will not be an easy one. She said all the right things during her unveiling; now, let’s see where our new Swiss guard takes us.
