Katongo hails historic goal
by Gary Al-Smith 10 June 2012, 11:22
The Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola opened to a historic win from the Chipolopolo by the team's talismanic striker Christopher Katongo. Now entering his twilight years, the Zambia captain hailed his 15th minute strike as "special".
"I am the first person to score in the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium and I have made history. You cannot take that away from me," he told reporters after the 1-0 win against Ghana.
The post match press conference of the Group D World Cup qualifier saw a defensive Katongo battle local Zambian journalists who sought to downplay his total output against Ghana.
"You cannot tell me that I did not play well. If the coach tells me that I will understand because then it will mean I did not do what he told me to do. But I did my job and I got the goal that gave us the win."
Katongo went on to speak about the impact of the win against the Black Stars. "We are back in the qualifiers and that is important. That is why we are are African champions. And we will remain African champions until somebody else takes the Cup."
But Herve Renard, seated by him was quick to admit that the win against the West Africans was not dazzling, though the Chipolopolo did enough to win. "We did not play spectacular football. We were just efficient."
Contrary views
Ghana's Agyemang-Badu, who only last week said Ghana "are playing like Barcelona", this time lamented the sometimes unfair nature of the beautiful game. He said Zambia did not deserve to win.
"That’s football for you. We have to keep our heads up and concentrate on the remaining matches. They didn’t deserve to win because we played all the game in the second half but that is football for you."
Agyemang-Badu did not say anything about Zambia's domination of the first half and the missed chances by Kalaba and Chansa that could have sealed the game by the hour mark.
