Bruce Mwape targets COSAFA glory despite missing key players
By Moses Mwanza | September 21, 2021
Zambia Women’s National Team Coach Bruce Mwape says the target is to win the 2021 edition of the COSAFA Women’s Championship in South Africa.
Speaking in an interview with the ZamFoot Crew after Tuesday’s training session at Edwin Imboela Stadium in Lusaka, Mwape said the new and experienced players will be able to gel in well and have the capabilities of winning the tournament as they are going there to compete and not just to add numbers.
“We are looking at new faces in our team and planning to give the chance for the upcoming 2022 African Women’s Cup Of Nations (AWCON) Qualifiers next month,” he said.
“We don’t want to go to COSAFA to add numbers, so with or without our regular players our target is to go there and compete.”
Only Eight players from the team that competed at the Olympics are in the squad even though they are currently missing in camp owing to club commitment but they are expected to join the team by Thursday afternoon after their midweek engagements in the league.
Mwape however still believes his side has depth and experienced players to help them overcome the challenge ahead because the opponents will be aiming higher knowing very well that the Copper Queens was recently at the Olympics.
“We still have some experienced players in the team, we know our opponents will come well prepared to play against us especially that we are coming from the Tokyo Olympics they might have watched us play and maybe saw our strengths and weaknesses and they will be aiming to fight harder with us and all the games in our group won’t be easy but we will work hard and change some tactics since we are going with a new squad,” Mwape said.
Mwape is expected to name his final list this weekend ahead of the tournament set to kick-off on 28th September 2021.
The Copper Queens are in Group C alongside Eswatini, Namibia, and guests Uganda.
Zambia will start the journey with a match against Eswatini on 30th September before taking on Namibia 3 days later and their last Group huddle will be guests Uganda on 5th October with all their three matches set to kick-off at 15:30hrs.