Tue, 19 Dec 2017 12:58:05 +0000
By Myoba Miyoba
FORMER Zambia National Soccer team coach Honor Janza has described the late under-20 star Changwe Kalale who passed on last Sunday as a skilful player who will be greatly missed by the Zambian football fraternity.
Janza said that Zambia had been robbed of a talented young player whose dream was to represent Zambia at the highest level.
Janza added that the death of the talented Kalale was painful to bear as he was the coach who gave the young Kalale his first senior national team call up in a friendly against Ivory Coast in October 2014.
“Having been the first national team coach to give him his first senior national team call up for the Afcon qualifying and tournament preparations. It leaves me with deep pain and sorrow to hear of his demise. Everyone was hoping for his healing and one day see him finish what he loved most that is playing football at the highest level,
“I moved with him during qualifying games and I remember in Mozambique in the dressing room he was playing ball juggling competition with the former FAZ president Kalusha Bwalya and the boy was a surprise to watch Kalusha asked; “who is this boy? He has too much football skills,” Janza said.
Kalale, who played for the Ndola giants Zesco United, and his two team-mates, Nyambe Mulenga and Satchmo Chakawa, were travelling to Lusaka to join the Zambia national team training camp when their Zesco United branded minibus collided head-on with another vehicle.
Kalale, Mulenga, Chakawa and eight others suffered serious injuries while four people were killed in the crash.
The young under-20 star suffered a spinal injury which restricted his movement and ended his dream of playing for the national team at the highest level.
Instead of playing in his first Africa Cup of Nations, he followed the progress of his team-mates in Equatorial Guinea from a hospital bed nursing injuries suffered in the road accident.
After almost three years of being confined to a wheelchair after the accident on December 14, 2014, the promising under-20 star passed away on December 17 which was also his birthday.
