The rapid rise of Zambia, a team led by but not reliant on Barbra Banda

New York Times

a day ago

The Olympic Stadium Rabat was rocking with boisterous support. Hosts Morocco had high hopes for the opening game of this year's Women's Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON). But then Barbra Banda dazzled and stole the show in her tournament debut.
It took just 58 seconds for the 25-year-old to score. Picking up the ball just inside the Moroccan half, she glided past a couple of challenges before firing a shot from just outside the area past goalkeeper Khadija Er-Rmichi.
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The Orlando Pride forward went on to provide an assist for fellow NWSL star Racheal Kundananji and was named player of the match as the Copper Queens drew 2-2 with the Atlas Lionesses.
It may not have been a victory, but it was a statement nevertheless.
For the first time in their history, Zambia are one of the tournament favourites. After finishing second in Group A — two victories and a draw left them level on seven points with table-toppers Morocco — the Copper Queens face a difficult quarter-final against nine-time African champions Nigeria today, but thanks to their raft of attacking talent, they enter the match with confidence.
There is Banda the history-maker — the first woman to score back-to-back hat-tricks at the Olympics — and her Pride team-mates Prisca Chiufya and Grace Chanda. Bay FC's Kundananji, once the world's most expensive female player, and Fridah Mukoma, currently on loan in China from Kansas City Current, make up the five NWSL players at the vanguard of a nation that has seemingly cracked the code for developing talent.
Zambian football is, at its roots, a community sport, played in every corner of the country; from the capital Lusaka to the Copperbelt Province near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Rift Valley on the country's northern fringes.
'There are so many community tournaments that are being hosted and school programmes,' Fred Kangwa, manager of Bauleni United Sports Academy and the man who first spotted Banda, tells The Athletic.
'It is because of the sense of belonging and ownership that communities feel where these girls come from.'
Zambia's under-17s, a team which has included Banda and seven other current Copper Queens players, have been dominant at the youth level in Africa. They regularly win the regional Council of Southern African Football Associations (COSAFA) Cup and have recently qualified for their second successive FIFA Under-17 World Cup. However, that success has rarely translated to anything significant at senior level.
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In 2014's WAFCON, Zambia lost every game. After failing to qualify in 2016, they have featured in every edition since. They failed to get out of their group in 2018, but at the next tournament in 2022 they broke through, losing to eventual winners South Africa in the semi-finals. Zambia could not follow up on that progress in last year's Olympics, finishing bottom and without a point in a heavyweight group that included the U.S., Germany and Australia.
Change has been bubbling the last decade, in large part thanks to stars like Banda and Kundananji playing abroad in the NWSL. Much of the credit also lies with the strength of the country's domestic football. In 2022, Zambia's 22-player squad was made up of 18 domestically based players.
In the mid-2010s, the Zambian Football Federation (FAZ) began incorporating previously unconnected regional leagues into a single football pyramid. Perhaps more impactfully, they also established regular youth-level tournaments for academies and schools to participate in for both boys and girls.
Those youth teams feed into provincial youth teams that play in national tournaments, which are monitored by the federation.
From an early age, most players are on the radar of the national team — Banda was selected for the Under-17 national side at just 13. The federation has also been proactive at providing international opportunities for those youth players, regularly participating in the COSAFA Cup.
While the vast majority of Zambian clubs are community rooted, the top table of Zambian football has always been different. The majority of teams in the top flight are state-run, with various national institutions sponsoring their own teams: the army and air force, as well as sponsorship from state-owned industries and mining companies.
This often means that men's clubs struggle to keep up financially with their continental rivals, and those in Europe and North America, who are often owned by wealthy investors. But in the women's game, where private financial investment is virtually non-existent, the modest but consistent salaries that players and staff can be paid are transformative. With a greater amount of national interest in the last few years, almost all of the clubs backed by the state have turned professional.
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'It's one of the things that attracted other players to come,' Carol Kanyemba, head coach of Green Buffaloes, as well as the Zambian U-17s, tells The Athletic. '(They think) maybe I can be employed in the army, or I can get a salary at the end of the day. I can help my family using this money.'
Players at Green Buffaloes are given a salary from the army but are assigned to play football as their job in the military. They are even given ranks. Banda, who played for the Buffaloes for two years, was recently promoted to Warrant Officer Class Two.
Clubs like Green Buffaloes and the Red Arrows of the air force also guarantee jobs for players after their footballing career ends, providing a level of stability that is rarely found in football.
It's that community support combined with superstar players that help bring about lasting change. That is, players like Banda.
The African Player of the Year's career has taken her from the Green Buffaloes — bar a six-month sojourn into boxing where she won all five of her professional bouts — to Dux Logrono in northern Spain and Shanghai Shengli in the Chinese Women's Super League, where she scored 18 goals from 13 games in her first season, before moving to the NWSL.
'She went to boxing because she felt football was not given the necessary attention that it was given for girls,' says Kangwa. 'She thought boxing would be a faster route for her to get employed as a soldier in the Zambia army.'
In the U.S. Banda has continued to shine. Last year she was named the league's MVP after scoring 17 goals as the Pride secured a first league title. At last year's Games, she again proved her worth on the world stage, scoring a first-half hat-trick against Australia. No African has scored as many as her 10 goals across two Olympics.
And yet, this is her first WAFCON.
Banda, who is a cisgender woman, missed the 2018 and 2022 tournaments due to gender eligibility concerns raised by the federation. This was reportedly linked to naturally high testosterone levels that CAF claimed were higher than the federation's limit; however, she has never been found to have broken any rules set by FIFA, CAF or the NWSL.
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With their best player denied a place on one of the sport's biggest stages, Kundananji stepped up in 2018 but also faced exclusion in 2022.
Zambia's players found a way forward. Banda scored two hat-tricks at the 2020 Olympics (held in 2021). The professional leagues started to take shape shortly after and a national team with 18 players playing professionally domestically reached WAFCON's semi-finals in 2022.
Of course, there are still struggles, like the bottom-of-the-group finish in last year's Olympics, but in the space of seven years, Zambia's overall rise has been swift. And now, they face Nigeria on equal footing with one of Africa's historical heavyweights with a place in the last four at stake.