Zambia women national team head coach Bruce Mwape has confirmed that he has included three players from the rest squad into his Olympic bound squad for assessment.
Red Arrows trio of Mary Mambwe, Square Maiwase, and Chiko Nkhoma are the three players who have been summoned for assessment. The Copper Queens took on ‘the rest’ on Saturday and beat them 4-1 in a friendly match.
Meanwhile, Mwape believes the Copper Queens need to beat the best to become the best after they were drawn in Group F alongside Brazil, Netherlands, and China who will set an Asian record with their sixth participation at the biggest sports festival that kicks off in July.
Mwape has also revealed that only one player Anita Mulenga, is nursing an injury and she is expected to start light training later this week.
“I think there is no problem everything is going well, Looking at how we played things are okay, only one player is injured, Anita Mulenga she is been down for some time but she is expected to start light training by the end of this week,” he said.
“There some players who showed that they could play for the senior national team, We managed to pick about three and one of them is the goalkeeper (Chiko Nkhoma), Since we have got new goalkeepers here the ones who we have been with they have relaxed because they see no competition so that’s why we picked on the one who was in goal for the rest. The other players are Mary Mambwe and Square Maiwase.”
“Those are just names, the games are played in 90 minutes, so if we start looking at the names then our girls won’t be able to perform according to our plan. We know we are meeting big teams like Brazil am sure they have been to this tournament a number of times and playing teams like that make us improve our standard of play because we playing the best, Like the saying goes to be the best you need to beat the best so for me, it’s okay because it’s only 90 minutes that will decide,” he added.
The Copper Queens are currently in camp as part of preparations for the Olympic Games. Zambia has so far played Chile whom they beat 2-1 before losing to South Africa 3-1.
The Olympics will officially run between 24 July and 9 August 2021, but sporting action kicks off two days before the opening ceremony with preliminary women’s football matches set to light up the occasion for various sports disciplines.
A good job Bruce. My only advice is that your backline should improve on keeping shape and area marking. They are vulnerable to counter attacks and as such none of your backline should never overlap. They should never cross the centre line. Chipolopolo continues to conceded from the wings because of a collapsing and overlapping back line!
Given a chance, I would prefer that the entire team is assigned to Zambia army for a week or more for a painful intensive physical training to harden them…