{"id":10921,"date":"2025-07-20T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10921\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T17:00:11","slug":"after-wafcon-quarterfinal-defeat-how-does-zambia-recover-equalizer-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10921\/","title":{"rendered":"After WAFCON quarterfinal defeat, how does Zambia recover? \u2013 Equalizer Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Zambia-training-scaled.jpeg\" class=\"attachment- size- wp-post-image\" alt=\"Zambia head coach speaks to players during a training session at the 2024 Women's Africa Cup of Nations.\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"  \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Football Association of Zambia (FAZ)<\/p>\n<p>This time was supposed to be different.<\/p>\n<p>Zambia was now a force to be reckoned with in African football. This summer\u2019s Women\u2019s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) finals would be their fifth consecutive major international tournament in as many years. Head coach Bruce Mwape was gone, after being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2025\/jan\/07\/bruce-mwape-zambia-women-coach-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-moved-aside\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">investigated by FIFA for more than two years<\/a> for sexual misconduct and assault. In was the Swiss Nora H\u00e4uptle, who had recently helped turn Ghana\u2019s foundering program around.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/7824185a\/Barbra-Banda\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Barbra Banda<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/32f48f46\/Racheal-Kundananji\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Racheal Kundananji<\/a> were now global stars, and in the wake of their exclusion from the 2022 WAFCON tournament <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2022\/07\/13\/zambian-woman-footballer-sex-tested-because-fifa-allows-it\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">for spurious \u201csex testing\u201d<\/a>, the Copper Queens\u2019 high-flying attack would all be present and together, ready to improve on their miraculous third-place finish in Morocco three years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\n      Access the best women\u2019s soccer coverage all year long\n  <\/p>\n<p>\n     Start your FREE, 7-day trial of The Equalizer Extra for industry-leading reporting and insight on the USWNT, NWSL and beyond.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/equalizerWhite-1.png\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) This time was supposed to be different. Zambia was now a force&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-10921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}