Timothy Mwitwa (21 May 1968 – 27 April 1993) 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 was a member of the Zambia national team. He was among those killed in the crash of the team plane in Gabon in 1993.

Career

Timothy Mwitwa started his playing career at Kabwe Rangers FC, a club run by the Kabwe Municipal Council, before attending trials at the "Magnificent" Kabwe Warriors FC in 1986 and got picked under the tutelage of late Godfrey "Ucar" Chitalu as coach of the club. Mwitwa was part of the Kabwe Warriors team that won their first Zambian Super league championship in 15 years in the 1987 soccer season but got demoted the following year. The club also won the Champion of Champions Cup the same season under coach Bizwell Phiri. Mwitwa featured for the Kabwe Warriors squad that participated in the African Cup of Champions Clubs in 1988, where they were knocked out in the second round by Al Hilal of Sudan. Mwitwa was sent off early on in the first half of the second leg tie in Omdurman, with Warriors going on to lose 3–1, having held Al Hilal 0–0 in the first leg in Kabwe. Warriors played in the lower first division in the 1988 season, losing only one game to Monze Swallows and were promoted right back to the Super Division the following year. Most soccer pundits expected Warriors to lose most of their star players (including Mwitwa, goal keeper Richard Mwanza, defenders Whiteson Changwe, Samuel Chomba and James Chitalu among others) but the club managed to hold on to all their players, a feat that is attributed to their promotion at first attempt. Mwitwa later played club football for Nkana F.C. in Zambia making only a few appearances in the 1993 season before the Gabon tragedy. He is regarded as one of the finest talents to have ever emerged from Kabwe town as well as Kabwe Warriors football club, hence his nicknames "Teacher" and Tim "Tiger". In 1990, he joined AC Sparta Prague where he appeared in seven Czechoslovak First League matches. Mwitwa made several appearances for the Zambia national team and participated in 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.

References

External links

* 1968 births 1993 deaths Zambian men's footballers Men's association football forwards Zambia men's international footballers 1990 African Cup of Nations players 1992 African Cup of Nations players Nkana F.C. players AC Sparta Prague players Zambian expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Czechoslovakia Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Gabon Footballers killed in the 1993 Zambia national football team plane crash {{Zambia-footy-bio-stub