Copper Queens duo of defender Margaret Belemu and midfielder Ireen Lungu are still hopeful the Copper Queens can progress to the quarter final of the TotalEnergies CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations Morocco 2026.
This follows the team’s 1-0 defeat on Saturday at the hands of record Ten time WAFCON winners, Nigeria.
Belemu believes the team played well despite conceding the an early goal that eventually condemned them to their first loss at the tournament.
“I think it was a very tough game. We played well as a team despite conceding a goal in the first half, in the first minutes, but I feel we still have a lot of hope to push on in the next game,” Belemu said.
“I think that in the way that we’re standing at the back, we need to also improve our standing. We need to work on ourselves to save the box and utilise the chances we get and score. To the fans, thank you so much for your support. Continue supporting us. Don’t lose hope in us. We’ll still fight in the next game and qualify for the next round,” she added.
Meanwhile midfielder Ireen Lungu says the team has made notable improvement despite the loss and will come good against Malawi.
The China based players says she has a lot of faith in her teammates and that they will go back to the drawing board to work hard and push themselves.
“We still have a chance. I think, we just back and do better in training. We can go to the next round against Malawi. I think the team is just okay. We just have to push ourselves, work together and we of course supposed to do better than this. I believe in my team, I believe in my teammates. I think we’ll do better in our next match,” Lungu said.
“ Yeah, very much. The team has improved and the team is still improving. I know we can do better. It was just an error. And the same error, we considered that same goal. Otherwise, the team is just okay. We’ve improved so, so very much.”
“They should continue supporting us, and we can qualify to the next round,” she added
