Zambia U-17 national team coach George Chilufya has described Zambia’s group at the 2020 COSAFA U-17 Championship as a fair one. Zambia was drawn in group B alongside Botswana, Malawi, and Comoros Islands.
Chilufya who has been drilling the boys for some time says he is happy with the Competition in the team and wants to get the best out of the players he has on camp.
Zambia won the tournament last year and Chilufya of aware of the tough test that awaits the team in South Africa later this month as every team will be looking to beat them.
“So far so good, Everyone is pushing and all the boys we called in the camp are here and we just doing our final touches, we have a few days to go. It’s quite encouraging the competition is high, we just hope to get the best out of them in the few days remaining,” he said.
” It’s a fair group, in a tournament the first game is always important and all our efforts are going towards the first game because that will give us direction.”
“We going there as defending champions so everyone is ready for us so we just have to be as good as we were last year and do more, The target is that we get out of the preliminary first probably top of the group and see what follows,” he added.
The 2020 U-17 COSAFA tournament will serve as continental qualifiers for the 2021 U-17 AFCON. Chilufya told the ZamFoot Crew that everyone is already aware of the big task ahead.
” That’s a challenge and everyone knows that we are not just going there for cosafa but to get qualifications into the AFCON, The importance has been put across, Everyone is aware and ultimately we have to go for the AFCON but we have to work very hard in this COSAFA because that is what is going to give us the AFCON,” he said.
“Great, everyone is competing, we have U-15 boys who went to Croatia which has pushed the team. The competition levels are very high which is good for the team,” he added.
The 2020 Under-17 COSAFA tournament will be held from November 16th to November 29th, 2020 in Nelson Mandela Bay South Africa.
