Avram Grant, a former manager of Ghana, West Ham, and Chelsea has been named the new manager of Zambia.
The Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) announced on Thursday that a two-year contract has been reached with the Israeli.
“I was looking for the right challenge and that’s why I chose Zambia,” Grant said at a press conference in Lusaka.
“I came here because of the challenge and I hope when I leave here I will look around and say we did a good job and made a good foundation for the future.”
“I think Zambia has the potential, we have set the targets of what we want to achieve.”
Grant has prior managerial experience in Africa. He coached Ghana to the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations final, where they lost to Ivory Coast on penalties. Two years later, after coming fourth in the same tournament, Grant announced his resignation.
The 67-year-old Israeli tactician took over from Moses Sichone, a former Zambian international who has been serving as interim manager since the departure of former Croatian international Aljosa Asanovic in September.
Moses Sichone has earned awards as a manager in his native country as well as in England and Serbia. It’s anticipated that Sichone will stay on as an assistant coach.
Grant will be charged with turning around the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations champions’ declining fortunes. The Chipolopolo (Copper Bullets), who placed third in their qualifying group for the 2022 World Cup, were unable to advance to this year’s competition in Cameroon.
Zambia does, however, have a number of promising young players, such as Fashion Sakala of Rangers and Patson Daka of Leicester City, who both won the Under-20 Nations Cup in 2017 and advanced to the U20 World Cup quarterfinals the same year.
The first game Grant will oversee will be a qualifier against Lesotho at home in March for the 2023 Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast.
Avram Grant
Avraham “Avram” Grant, an Israeli professional football manager who was born on May 6, 1955, is now in charge of the Zambian national team.
In addition to managing the Israel national team for four years, he has spent the most of his coaching and management career in Israel, where his teams have won numerous national league and cup competitions.
Grant relocated to England in 2006 to work as Portsmouth’s technical director before being named director of football at Chelsea in July 2007.
Grant was named Chelsea’s manager two months later, in September 2007, following José Mourinho’s departure.
His contract was terminated at the end of the season despite leading the team to the Champions League and League Cup finals, as well as competing for the Premier League title until the very last minute.
In October 2009, Grant returned to Portsmouth as director of football. The following month, he was appointed manager.
Grant left the club after it was demoted to the Football League Championship and was hired as manager of West Ham United in June 2010. He served in that capacity until May 2011, when he was fired after the team was demoted to the Football League Championship.
Grant was named coach of the Ghanaian national football team in 2014 following one championship season as the manager of Partizan Belgrade and one season as the technical director for Thai side BEC Tero Sasana.
After losing in the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations semifinals, he resigned from his job.
A day after Joo de Deus, the team’s head coach, was fired for a bad performance, Grant relocated to India to work as a technical advisor for NorthEast United of the Indian Super League.
