Timothy Mwitwa

Timothy Mwitwa (21 May 1968 – 27 April 1993) was a Zambian footballer and member of the national team. He was among those killed in the crash of the team plane in Gabon in 1993.[1]

Career

Timothy Mwitwa started his playing career at Kabwe Rangers FC, a club run by the Kabwe Municipal Council, before attending trials at the "Magnificent" Kabwe Warriors FC in 1986 and got picked under the tutelage of late Godfrey "Ucar" Chitalu as coach of the club. Mwitwa was part of the Kabwe Warriors team that won their first Zambian Super league championship in 15 years in the 1987 soccer season but got demoted the following year. The club also won the Champion of Champions Cup the same season under coach Bizwell Phiri.

Mwitwa featured for the Kabwe Warriors squad that participated in the African Cup of Champions Clubs in 1988, where they were knocked out in the second round by Al Hilal of Sudan. Mwitwa was sent off early on in the first half of the second leg tie in Omdurman, with Warriors going on to lose 1 - 3, having held Al Hilal 0 - 0 in the first leg in Kabwe.

Warriors played in the lower first division in the 1988 season, losing only one game to Monze Swallows and were promoted right back to the Super Division the following year. Most soccer pundits expected Warriors to lose most of their star players (including Mwitwa, goal keeper Richard Mwanza, defenders Whiteson Changwe, Samuel Chomba and James Chitalu among others) but the club managed to hold on to all their players, a feat that is attributed to their promotion at first attempt.

Mwitwa later played club football for Nkana F.C. in Zambia making only a few appearances in the 1993 season before the Gabon tragedy. He is regarded as one of the finest talents to have ever emerged from Kabwe town as well as Kabwe Warriors football club, hence his nicknames "Teacher" and Tim "Tiger". [2] In 1990, he joined AC Sparta Prague where he appeared in 7 Czechoslovak First League matches.[3][4]

Mwitwa made several appearances for the Zambia national football team and participated in the 1990 and 1992 African Cup of Nations finals.

References

  1. ↑ "Remember Gabon air victims on Heroes day"
  2. ↑ "Muere la selección de Zambia" [Zambian selection dies] (PDF) (in Spanish). El Mundo Deportivo. 29 April 1993.
  3. ↑ Jak Šimáně pro Slavii získal Číňany. Dali jsme si skleničku a bylo to, iDNES.cz (in Czech)
  4. ↑ "Počty startů hráčů v I. Československé lize: M" (in Czech). JFK-Fotbal. Archived from the original on 10 May 2009. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
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