Newly appointed CAF technical and development committee chairperson and former FAZ president Kalusha Bwalya says Zambia and Africa as a whole needs qualified football administrators, instructors and coaches in order to enhance the quality of the sport.

Speaking when he featured on QFM’s Sports Chat programme yesterday, Kalusha said African football could only be promoted if it had good administrators.

“I think that it is very very important because the more we have good administrators, good instructors and coaches, the more we shall be able to enhance the quality of football on the continent. There must be improvement on technical ability of the whole preparational teams,” Kalusha said.

“People in Africa love football. It is number one sport. It brings the people together. We should not lag behind because we are competing with Europe, Asian football which has always been our main target.”

He regretted that although African football was improving, it was laced with racial discrimination.

“The game has improved so much. Today the speed of the game in Africa is much more advanced. Its a pity that we have these incidences of racial discrimination. I think in the 60s this issue was more rampant. CAF and FIFA should sit down to discuss this problem. We had a task on racism which we said they should be no nonsense and zero tolerance and that is the question that still has to be discussed where we are at CAF and FIFA level. We need to look after our players,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kalusha said he was optimistic that African teams would perform better at the forthcoming Under-20 World Cup tournament, adding that Zambia had the potential to go through to the knock out group.

“African teams over the years have commanding performances at junior levels. If I look at the competition which was played in Zambia, we have to be very proud as Africans because it is one of the moments we have seen good performance at junior level. This is the future of African football and Zambia has a fantastic team and so we expect our teams to play very well,” said Kalusha.