Lwandamina under-fire at struggling Azam

by Staff Reporter

Wednesday Nov 24, 2021. 12:00

Coach George Lwandamina is feeling the early season pressure at Tanzania club Azam FC following a poor start to the 2021/2022 season.

The ex- Zesco United and Chipolopolo coach has been with Azam since December, 2020 following a brief stint as Prison Leopards technical director.

Azam are currently 10th in the 16-team Tanzania Premiership with 7 points from six matches played.

On Sunday, Azam lost 2-1 away to third from bottom KMC to suffer their third league defeat of the season and fans later demanded that the Zambian-born coach be sacked.

Azam has also failed to reach the CAF Confederation Cup group stage for two straight seasons under the Zambian.

But Azam CEO Abdulakarim Nurdin believes the team is going through an early season phase and would rebound.

“We feel the pain our supporters are going through, it is a very difficult situation but at Azam FC we do not operate in that way. The club owners make final decisions,” Nurdin told The Guardian newspaper of Tanzania.

“Club owners always make decisions, in our case, I am sure this shall pass and we will start recording good results.”

Lwandamina, who led Zesco to four league titles, finished third in his first season in charge of Azam.

Azam have finished third over the last two seasons behind their giant Dar es Salaam rivals Young Africans and Simba who have finished second and first respectively in the same timeframe.

This is Zambian coach’s second spell in Tanzania after a season and a half at Young Africans where he won the league crown in 2017.

Lwandamina later returned to Zesco for a second stint where he won two successive FAZ Super League titles.

But Lwandamina was fired in September, 2020 by Zesco after the nine-time Zambian champions failed to retain it for a fourth successive time.