Zambia Women’s national team head coach Bruce Mwape has noted improvements in terms of fitness of the players following the short time they have been in camp.
Mwape was earlier concerned with the fitness levels of the players but is now happy with the improvement from the girls during their stay in camp. The players were out of action for close to six months due to the Coronavirus epidemic.
“We have trained for nine days now and earlier on I said the problem we have is that some of the players are not fit but in the few days we have been with them in terms of fitness there has been a slight improvement but we still need to work on their general fitness levels more,” he said.
“We gave players tactical assignments during the COVID-19 period and most of them were doing that but some of them like Green Buffaloes were not allowed to train and could only use their own yards,” he added.
Mwape has added a number of new faces into his squad with most of them coming from the Charles Haalubono coached U-20 side since Hellen Mubanga, Rachel Nachula, Rachel Kundananji, and Barbra Banda are set to miss the tournament as they may not be released by their European clubs for the COSAFA tournament.
Mwape who also doubles up as Nchanga Rangers boss has thrown a challenge to the new players to maintain the standard set by the team who reached the final of the COSAFA tournament last year and went on to qualify to the Olympics.
The Copper Queens are set to face Young Green Buffaloes in a friendly match tomorrow and Mwape says that’s when he will assess the new players’ levels of match fitness.
“The new players mostly came from the U-20 and we were together in South Africa, They saw how they (Copper Queens) played and they know what they suppose to do. Last year we reached the final so they would not like the team to lose in the preliminaries, It’s actually a challenge to them, We have to maintain our standards,” Mwape told the ZamFoot Crew in an interview this morning during a training session at Mulungushi service club in Chamba Valley.
“The new players, we have not yet properly assessed them in terms of game and general fitness. We will assess their game fitness tomorrow when we play Young Buffaloes, That’s where will be able to tell if they can fit in or not.”
The 2020 COSAFA has set up a tentative calendar subject to the Covid-19 situation in the region that will see the tournament being played from November 4th -14th in Port Elizabeth.
Thereafter, the Copper Queens will shift their concentration to an International friendly match against Chile slated for 28th November and 2nd December 2020 in Santiago.
