Recently elected FIFA president Gianni Infantino will visit Zambia in 2018 after accepting an invitation from Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president Andrew Kamanga.
His visit will serve to honour the 25th anniversary of the tragic Gabon air crash of 1993, which killed 18 members of the Zambia national football team.
Swiss former UEFA Secretary General Infantino was elected as the new FIFA president at the end of February, beating Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain in a second round of voting with 115 of the 207 votes from FIFA’s national associations.
Infantino and Kamanga are both in Mexico for the 66th FIFA Congress and the FAZ president was pleased to confirm the future visit from the head of world football’s governing body.
‘We are delighted that the FIFA president has accepted my invitation to come to Zambia in 2018 after we had fruitful discussions with him on various developmental issues,’ Kamanga said to SuperSport.
‘He has expressed confidence in our leadership and wants Zambia to succeed with its football development programmes,’ he added.
Infantino has suggested that Africa should receive two additional World Cup qualification spots if his plan to expand the flagship competition from 32 to 40 teams is successful. This would mean seven qualification spots for the continent.