Pearson Mwanza (1 January 1968 – 23 March 1997) was a Zambian professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

who played as a

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People * Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Sm ...

. He represented the Zambia national team at international level.

Club career

Born in

Kitwe Kitwe is the third largest city in terms of infrastructure development (after Lusaka and Ndola) and second largest city in terms of size and population (after Lusaka) in Zambia. With a population of 517,543 (''2010 census provisional'') Kitwe is ...

, Zambia, Mwanza began playing football for local side

Power Dynamos Power Dynamos is a Zambian football club based in Kitwe that plays in the MTN/FAZ Super Division. They play their home games at Arthur Davies Stadium in Kitwe. The club is currently sponsored by Copperbelt Energy Corporation. Power Dynamos is ...

' youth team when he was still a schoolboy at Ndeke A Primary School and later on went to Chamboli Secondary School in 1983 in Kitwe, where he excelled in football.Mwala, Melody "Pearson Mwanza is dead" ''Times of Zambia,'' 24 March 1997, p.16 He made his debut for the main team as a teenager and became a household name of Power Dynamos. He was selected in the under-20 national team and played in all the matches in which Zambia emerged the winner of the

COSAFA CUP The COSAFA Cup or COSAFA Senior Challenge Cup is an annual tournament for teams from Southern Africa organized by Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA), inaugurated after the ban against the Republic of South Africa had been ...

held in Malawi. He was then drafted in the senior team with the likes of Kenneth "Bubble" Malitoli and established himself as one of the regular players in the team. He later on moved to

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

and Egypt to play for

CSKA Pamir Dushanbe CSKA Pamir Dushanbe ( tg, Клуби футболи ЦСКА-Помир Душанбе, Klubi Futboli CSKA Pomir Dushanbe; fa, زسکا پامیر دوشنبه) is a professional football club based in Dushanbe, Tajikistan that currently plays in ...

and Al Mokawloon Al Arab. He was fondly known by most of his childhood friends and fellow footballers as

Bruno Conti Bruno Conti (; born 13 March 1955) is an Italian football manager and former player. He is currently head of A.S. Roma's youth sector. Throughout his playing career, Conti was usually deployed as a winger, and also previously played for Roma, ...

(nicknamed after one of the Italian footballers of the 90s).His closest friends in football circle were Kapambwe " Gentile" Mulenga; Debbie Makinka; Lios "Socrates" Makwanza; Lucky "Kumalo" Mhango; Kenneth "Bubble" Malitoli to mention but a few. He was a nature left footer and scored spectacular goals during his heydays. On returning to Zambia, Mwanza ventured to South Africa for a brief professional career before rejoining Power Dynamos though he did not stay long there and crossed the road to

Nkana F.C. Nkana FC is a football club based in Kitwe, Zambia. The football team is competing in the MTN/FAZ Super Division, and is regarded as one of the country's most popular teams. Nkana FC has won 13 League titles, which made it to be Zambia's most su ...

in 1995 where he found a home before he decided to retire from active football.

International career

Mwanza made several appearances for the Zambia national team, often named in the starting line-up by coach Samuel 'Zoom' Ndhlovu, at the expense of Europe-based professionals. Mwanza held his own in such company and played at the

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

and

1992 African Cup of Nations The 1992 African Cup of Nations was the 18th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, the football championship of Africa ( CAF). It was hosted by Senegal. The field expanded to twelve teams, split into four groups of three; the top two teams in ea ...

finals. He also represented Zambia at the

1988 Summer Olympics The 1988 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad () and commonly known as Seoul 1988 ( ko, 서울 1988, Seoul Cheon gubaek palsip-pal), was an international multi-sport event held from 17 September to 2 October ...

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

Death

Mwanza died in Kitwe after an illness.

References

External links

*
Biography at Sports-reference.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mwanza, Pearson 1968 births 1997 deaths People from Kitwe Zambian footballers Association football forwards Zambia international footballers Olympic footballers of Zambia Footballers at the 1988 Summer Olympics 1990 African Cup of Nations players 1992 African Cup of Nations players Soviet Top League players Power Dynamos F.C. players CSKA Pamir Dushanbe players Al Mokawloon Al Arab SC players Nkana F.C. players Zambian expatriate footballers Zambian expatriate sportspeople in Egypt Expatriate footballers in Egypt Expatriate footballers in the Soviet Union