12/17/2020
Willie Phiri: The Majestic Midfielder Who Set Chingola Alight
They chanted his name with reverence reserved for deity. He was a magician on the field and his majestic style was music personified on the pitch. The once-popular term ‘banana shot’ was frequently used to describe his uncanny ability to bend the ball to follow his demands.
When Willie Phiri stepped onto the pitch, as a fifteen- year-old for Nchanga Rangers, it was the start of a career that would go on to span two decades, and that would lift football in Chingola to new heights.
He was spotted playing social football and recommended to Chingola's biggest and most popular club. Once settled in the Nchanga Rangers midfield, he stamped his authority with such impact, becoming a cult hero while still a teenager.
Yet, football was a calling he had to be persuaded to take up. The reluctance of his father to let him take up football at a serious level kept him in the shadows of the game until he broke out, persuaded by his father's friend to take part in a training session at Nchanga Rangers where he would go on to become the club’s most revered player ever.
Donning a set of sideburns - fashionable at the time - Willie Phiri was a majestic figure striding through the Rangers midfield and attack with a calm precision that devastated opposing teams. He had a level of composure that allowed him to meander past panicking defenders while he kept his head and took advantage of their disarray.
For the Zambia national team, he slotted into a much deeper role than he did for Nchanga Rangers. He sat in front of the back four and was the springboard for moving the ball quickly into more advanced areas of the pitch. The old number 6 role, as we used to call it, was the domain of more defensively minded players, but he took to the position with aplomb. In Nchanga Rangers, however,
he was the ideal textbook second striker, deadly when presented with chances in the box, and equally adept at falling back into deeper areas to bring in wide players, usually Patrick Nkhata and ‘Little’ Joe Musonda, and his strike partner, George Mofya, into the game.
Whenever in possession the chant, ‘Willie!’ rang around all four corners of the stadium, not only in Nchanga, but everywhere else he played, as both home and opposing fans appreciated his
composed demeanor. He featured in three Africa Cup of Nations tournaments but was most influential in 1982 in Libya when he was at the peak of his powers, seasoned, the finished product and able to outwit the best the continent had to offer. But for questionable refereeing in the semifinal against the host team Libya, Zambia would have played in the final and Phiri’s international career would have reached the highest level of the African game.
In earlier tournaments, in 1974 and 1978, he was an important player for the Zambian cause, alongside other players who had risen through school's football to lay a foundation on which Zambian football would thrive for many years to come.
In 1980, inspired largely by Phiri’s leadership and dominance of the pitch, Nchanga Rangers won their first ever league title. In the final run-in they overran the best opposition in the country by 3,4,
and even 5-nil margins. Their authority was complete. Chingola jubilated like never before and their own local boy was the driver of their unprecedented success.
After his international career ended in 1982, he continued to grace the fields of the Zambian league for another season, less quick but more intellectual in his play, and passing his vast knowledge on the pitch to the next generation of stars. It was inevitable that he would slot into the role of coach so seamlessly and he did, making a mark as one of the more enlightened of coaches on the scene.
Under him, Nchanga Rangers thrived and he rebuild the team, phasing out the generation of players with whom he had won the league and introducing a new crop of players who turned Rangers into one of the most exciting sides of the latter part of the eighties. Stone Nyirenda, Webby Chikabala, Geoffrey Mulenga and Bruce Mwape’s attacking play continued a tradition that persits to this day; that of free-flowing, attacking football.
Later, he would leave his beloved Rangers, for a better pay packet in Botswana with Notwane FC and there, he restored the team to respectability in the Botswana league. After a couple of seasons, the lure to return to his old hunting ground proved too strong and he again took up the mantle, creating yet again a new generation of youth stars who would, a few years later, go on to give Rangers their second league title in the club’s history in 1998. Though Phiri would lay the foundation for the later success with the youth programmes he managed, he would not be on the bench when it happened.
A car accident on his way back to Lusaka from Chingola where he attended to football matters left him in a wheel chair for the remainder of his life. His love for football endured even this devastating tragedy and he was a regular at matches in Chingola and at the Konkola Stadium when Zambia played international matches there.
His passing in 2011 brought genuine grief to millions of
Zambians and he remains one of the most gifted players ever to grace Zambian football.
