Zambia’s women’s soccer team are facing being prevented from participating at this summer’s Olympic Games due to an ongoing political crisis within the country’s football association.
FIFA, world football’s governing body, has said the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) faces being suspended — and therefore Zambian teams prevented from featuring at international tournaments — following “undue influence by third parties” in FAZ.
Zambia’s High Court issued an injunction preventing FAZ’s annual general meeting (AGM) from taking place as scheduled on Saturday, which came after FAZ’s president and general secretary were arrested and charged with money laundering offences last week.
FIFA had sent FAZ a letter — published on FAZ’s official social media account and dated Friday, April 26 — following the injunction ordered by the High Court, stating that a failure to hold the AGM “appears to clearly amount to undue influence by third parties”.
FIFA’s laws prohibit third-party influence in the running of a member association and it has previously suspended nations where governments or courts have been judged to have interfered, such as India in August 2022. The letter added that the cancelled AGM could result in FAZ’s suspension, meaning its teams…
