Copper Bullets would love to honour victims

Kalusha Bwalya had a cannon of a left foot.

The top scorer at Belgian side Cercle Brugge in 1987, he was named African Footballer of the Year in 1988 after repeating the feat and cemented his place in Zambian soccer lore when his hat trick in that year's Olympics in Seoul helped his country's national team, nicknamed the Copper Bullets, to a stunning 4-0 win over Italy.

The following summer he was acquired by PSV Eindhoven, where as part of a talented side managed by Sir Bobby Robson he would win back-to-back Dutch titles in the early 1990s.

It was because of his club commitments that Bwalya made his own arrangements to travel to Dakar for a World Cup qualifier against Senegal in April 1993. Tragically, he would never again see his Copper Bullets teammates. On April 27, after a stopover in Libreville, Gabon, the Zambian national team's airplane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 25 passengers and crew.

The remains of the dead, which included six of Bwalya's teammates from the '88 Olympics, were buried in Heroes' Acre next to the national team stadium in Lusaka.

A memorial was constructed in their honour, and the names of the victims were burned into the national consciousness, where they are still inscribed. So, too, is the place where it happened.

For many Zambians, Gabon, and Libreville in particular, remains synonymous with that catastrophic day nearly 20 years ago when the blood of their football heroes washed up on its shores.

The current incarnation of the Copper Bullets is especially mindful of the tragedy -- even though many of the players are too young to have their own memories of it -- as the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations, co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, has taken them to within 100 miles of the crash site.

So far Zambia has been playing its matches in Bata, but a win against Sudan in today's quarter-final, coupled with a semifinal victory against either Ghana or Tunisia on Wednesday, would see them punch a ticket to Libreville, fateful Libreville, for the tournament final next Sunday.

The occasion would be as much a pilgrimage as a soccer match -- something that isn't lost on anyone within the national team as their pre-competition dream edges closer to reality.

"As we go to Gabon, every heart will pump so fast when we remember what happened in 1993," captain Christopher Katongo told the BBC ahead of the Cup of Nations. "The souls are still there and we have to do something about what happened to that team which perished in Gabon."

Katongo and his teammates are already halfway there.

They went unbeaten through the group stage, beating Senegal and Equatorial Guinea and drawing Libya, to finish top of their bracket and set up today's contest with Sudan.

Two more wins will see them get to where they want to be, although they know the best way to honour their heroes would be to lift the trophy Libreville.

In doing so they would become the first Zambian side to win the continental championship, doing one better than the 1994 team that came second. That group of players, constructed from the embers of the air disaster just 11 months earlier, progressed all the way to the final on little more than will, and in many ways the current Copper Bullets see themselves as responsible for finishing a job raw emotion couldn't quite complete.

"I have said to the boys there's no pressure on them," remarked Bwalya, now president of the Zambian Football Association, before arriving at the tournament.

"But they have to know that one of the best teams in the history of African football... died off the coast of Gabon."

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 4, 2012 C9