The ABSA Cup, formerly the Barclays Cup, is the current branding for an
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
cup competition
A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...
launched in 2007 by the
Football Association of Zambia
The Football Association of Zambia is the governing body of association football in Zambia founded in 1929 and based at the "Football House" on Alick Nkhata Road in Lusaka, the country's capital.
Affiliated to CAF and FIFA in 1964 and COSAFA i ...
.
Participants are decided half-way through current season (match day 17) and are picked from the two highest divisions in Zambia. Since the inaugural season of
National Division One
The RFU Championship is an English rugby union competition comprising twelve clubs. It is the second level of men’s English rugby and is played by both professional and semi-professional players. The competition has existed since 1987, when ...
in the 2019–20 season, 2 teams are picked from the that division and 6 are from the
Super League to enter the competition each year.
Following the full acquisition of the assets and operations of
Barclays in Africa, including Zambia, by South Africa-based
ABSA (now ''Absa Group Limited'') in 2018, the competition's next edition in 2019 was rebranded as the Absa Cup.
The
video assistant referee
The video assistant referee (VAR) is a match official in association football who reviews decisions made by the referee.
The assistant video assistant referee (AVAR) is a current or former referee appointed to assist the VAR in the video ope ...
(VAR) was introduced to the competition and implemented on
a pilot basis at
the final
Final, Finals or The Final may refer to:
*Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event
** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...
of
the 2023 edition, a first in
Zambian football
The sport of football in the country of Zambia is run by the Football Association of Zambia. The association administers the national male and female teams, as well as the Premier League, and the Women Super Division. 1993 Zambia national footbal ...
and Sub-Saharan African football as a whole. Thus, this put Zambia on the list as the 3rd African country after Morocco and Egypt to introduce and implement VAR in domestic football matches. Head of referees at FAZ, Aziph Banda, cited the inadequacy of
FIFA-certified referees to operate the VAR, with female referee Diana Chikotesha being the only exception having previously experienced its usage at the
2022 Women's Africa Cup of Nations
The 2022 Women's Africa Cup of Nations ( ar, كأس الأمم الإفريقية للسيدات 2022, french: Coupe d'Afrique des nations féminine 2022), (also referred to as WAFCON 2022) officially known as the 2022 TotalEnergies Women's Afri ...
and
Janny Sikazwe
Janny Sikazwe (born 1979) is a former Zambian international football referee.
He got his big break in 2008 at COSAFA U-20 Challenge Cup in South Africa when he was called to replace another referee who had failed a fitness test.
On 7 January ...
having retired as the reason why the association appointed foreign referees solely for that final.
Winners
Records
* Shadreck Malambo set a competition record by winning all 3 ABSA Cup finals he has featured in, each with 3 different clubs; 2013 with Red Arrows, 2018 with Nkana and 2023 with Forest Rangers.
References
{{Football in Zambia
Football competitions in Zambia