Thursday, March 28, 2024

Simukonda: We slept and were punished

Zambia Under 23 coach Fighton Simukonda has said his players ‘slept and were punished’ in a bizarre eight minutes in the second half in a 3-2 defeat to South Africa.

Zambia will now face group leaders Senegal on Saturday in the final game.

Below are the reactions from coaches and players after the match.

Fighton Simukonda

In my team everyone is disappointed because we played so well in the first half. We thought in the second half we were going to finish them unfortunately things came down, we slept and were punished.

The first half was good but the second half wasn’t because we gave them room to play around that’s why they scored. I told my boys that these guys are good in set pieces and we lacked concentration.

We came here to at least reach the semi finals but unfortunately lucky is not with us but against Senegal we are not taking things lightly because we have to win.

Lubambo Musonda (Midfielder, Zambia)
It is a very disappointing defeat. We did our very best in the first half and then in the second half we slept little bit and were punished.
We have a lot to do and we need to work extra hard in our next match and defend the name of our country because we will be playing for pride. We shall play well and pick it up from there.

Owen da Gama (Head Coach, South Africa)
I think it was very important us to try and salvaged a win to give us a better chance as our first match didn’t go well. We welcomed our two players back from the CAF Confederation Cup final, Gift Matupa scored two goals and created another.

I still believe these are two important players for us but we had to sacrifice them for the Confederation Cup because it’s also a CAF tournament.

We will be watching Tunisia and Senegal now to have a better understanding of their team.

Keagan Larenzo Dolly (Captain, South Africa)
I believed there is a lot of quality in our team and there are lots of leaders in our team.
In terms of me moving from left to right is just me trying to create opportunities for the team to score.

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20 Comments

    • Guru, I have been singing that song since before we even touched down in Senegal. People don’t understand how important preparation is.

  1. We need 2 start takin tournaments seriously not jst qualifyin 2 make numbers. Zambia is gud at qualifyin 4 african tournaments but preparations off late r not taken seriously and this disease is not only in football but other sports as well. Sports council of Zambia shud start workin. Talk about netball,futsal,football,swimmin,athelets the list goes on the story is always lack of proper preparations.

  2. Simukonda, Janza Lwandamina and the rest of these current coaches are useless, Faz should send people like Katongo, Joseph Musonda, Isaac Chansa and the likes to Europe for coaching lessons.

  3. Why was Emmanuel Mbola (still only 22) not invited to be part of this team? It seems that his tremendous experience would have added stability at the back. I would also like to see him rejoin the senior side for the next round of matches in 2016.

  4. This is what you get from taking players like chipesh, mukandawile, Friday samu, jack chilwa and nsabata and leave out Bruce musakanya, Moses Phiri, Kelvin mubanga, mbola, Evans, ndunba mechenga from Malaysia etc jst to mention a few. We are only good in qualification because qualifying to a African tournament in Zambia is not a privilege it is our right, any coach in Zambia can can qualify Zambia to any African tournament including an amateur coach like me when given zed players. We are tired of same thing always going back to the drawing board, 50 years of independence without going to the world cup because of corruption, dishonest, greedy and selfish. We have what it takes to go to the world cup but because of certain individuals we are now failing to reach second round on any tournament, this is very sad indeed. I have seen some people on this site pressing kalusha Bwalya, for what? This guy was really destroyed Zambian football if you can’t see then you don’t know anything about zed football. It really hurts.

  5. Faz has responsibilities to Kalu; pay him for wat he did on the pitch 20 yrs ago and most importantly fly him home to his Italian suzy in jhb.

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