Kalusha Bwalya

Kalusha Bwalya is considered the greatest player in Zambian football history and one of the biggest names in African football of the 20th century. An attacker known for speed and finishing, he gained international recognition while playing for PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands during the second half of the 1980s. For PSV, Bwalya scored a memorable individual goal in the 1988 European Cup, in a victory over Real Madrid, helping the Dutch club advance towards the title of that edition. He later also played for Deportivo América de Cali in Colombia. Bwalya was not on the Zambian national team plane that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, near Gabon, in April 1993, killing virtually the entire delegation traveling for an eliminatory match for the 1994 World Cup, as he was traveling separately, directly from Europe. The tragedy is one of the most remarkable in African football history. After retiring as a player, Bwalya became an executive, presiding over the Zambian Football Association (FAZ). In 2012, he witnessed the Zambian national team win its first African Cup of Nations, held in part in Gabon, in an achievement widely associated, symbolically, with the memory of the victims of the 1993 crash.