Kundananji optimistic about the future of the copper Queens
By Moses Mwanza | July 27, 2021
Copper Queens Kazakhstan-based striker Racheal Kundananji says she is impressed with the team’s performance despite losing 1-0 to Brazil in the final Group F match at Saitama Stadium which saw the Coach Bruce Mwape’s drilled lasses eliminated from the ongoing rescheduled 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Speaking in an interview after the match, the BIIK-Kazgurt Striker said the team has been working on their mistakes building up from their first match against the Netherlands plus the draw with China and they have been able to correct the mistakes.
“We have been improving from the first game up to the last match because we kept learning from our mistakes and I can say we have improved especially in defense and working together as a team because we were defending in large numbers and this made things very difficult for Brazil to score, it’s just unfortunate we conceded through a set-piece,” Kundananji said.
Kundananji who scored one of the goals against China said that there’s still potential in the team to qualify for other upcoming tournaments because they have a young squad.
“We are all still young in the team and we will do our best to qualify to the next Olympics,” she said.
“As a team, we want to qualify to the African Women’s Championship (AWCON) and win the trophy,” she added
The former Indeni Roses striker added that this tournament has helped them to gain some experience especially playing at a bigger stage like the Olympics.
“We want to show everyone that we are one of the best teams and this tournament has helped us to gain more experience because our opponents have played at different highest levels of football than us and playing against them has helped us to know how it feels playing big tournaments and it is a big achievement for us as a team,” she said
Kundananji however is hoping that the loopholes at the back are sealed so that they don’t leak in so many goals.
” I think going forward we have to work on defending, we can score goals upfront but if we have to win then we need to make sure the defense is tight and this is a duty for everyone in the team so am sure once we work on that we will be winning more games.”
Zambia came out 3rd in Group F behind log leaders the Netherlands who accumulated 7 points from three games followed by Brazil with the same number of points but only separated on goal difference while China is rocked bottom with only a point same the Zambia who had a better goal difference.