Clifford Mulenga

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clifford Mulenga (born 5 August 1987) is a Zambian football striker.

He was part of the Zambian 2006 African Nations Cup team, who finished third in group C in the first round of competition, thus failing to secure qualification for the quarter-finals. In 7th of January 2008 he was bought and signed in a fee of 600,000$ by Maccabi Petach Tikva FC.

He is known to be a quick and creative winger whose qualities have been praised as rare and akin to zambian great Kalusha Bwalya. When playing for zambia u-20s at last years world youth Championship he caught the eye of several european clubs most notably spanish giants Real Madrid and PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands. His silky skills were demonstrated especially against Nigeria u-20s at the African youth championships when his team lost in the semi-finals, a game which saw him give a man of the match performance only to be blighted by receiving a red card as a result of a petulant altercation with one of his opponents. On 2nd February 2008 Mulenga was named The 2007 Glo-CAF Young Player of the Year beating off competition from Congo Brazzaville’s Ibara Franchel and Nigeria’s Oseni Gani both of whom have been touted as future African stars. Prior to the 2008 Africa cup of nations a dispute arose as to which club Clifford belonged to. Pretoria University FC claimed he was on their books however he caused controversy with the Zambian press when the nation's football authority FAZ, announced he was to join Israeli side Maccabi Petach Tikva FC from Orgryte IS the swedish side which acquired him on loan from his university in Pretoria.