By Augustine Mwanza | January 14, 2021
Zambia national team coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic believes his troops are ready to start their 2020 CHAN tournament campaign following their 1-1 draw with Libya which was the team’s final preparatory match.
The Serbian gaffer feels the match has given him and his technical bench answers to any questions they may have had regarding the players and the team overall.
Micho expressed happiness with the player’s commitment and dedication. He was also quick to point out that he and his technical bench still had some things to polish out before their opening game against Tanzania on Tuesday.
“We have tried all the players that we are counting on except a few and we have checked the two goalkeepers seen where we are at present, how to do things and how not to do things. The match has given us very good answers that we need to be concentrating from the first to the last minute cause one moment of lapse you allow them to shot and conceded a goal like this it would have been much better to go into the match against Tanzania with confidence by winning,” he said.
“But with this, as a coach am happy with the comment, dedication, and hard work of the players but at the same moment also happy that players are not flying high cause I have critical things to look at before the match against Tanzania. We are polishing the things, we put ourselves in shape. We see who are the best eleven to represent us who are the players to come in as impact players and all that I have to say is we look forward to now go to Limbe and prepare very well for the group matches.”
“Preparations have been concluded with this match and I believe that every single match has been valued like 30 training sessions it has answered us so many things like who can and who can not who’s questionable who can come as an impact player who can start and with the best of the best days ahead of us we look at polishing things before playing Tanzania on Tuesday,” he added.
Micho also thanked the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) for organizing the Pre-CHAN tournament and several friendly matches for the team who he feels only have a few things left to polish up.
“It has been a double test for us, test for playing against very good teams and test of playing in different weather conditions, we are looking to adapt, adjust to different conditions and being ready to compete and represent your country in the best way. I want to thank FAZ, I want to thank everyone involved in the organizing of this tournament and this friendly match, I would like to thank our brother from Libya for giving us this match because they got their answers we got our answers, we got our questions they got their questions and it helps to both teams,” He said.
“It has been a match with double targets one is to prepare for the CHAN tournament and secondly is to prepare for the Africa cup qualifier against Algeria because this is a representative of North African football under the given circumstances I believe that every single task that we had set in front of us we have fulfilled now only remaining to be polished and to look forward to getting performances and results.”
Zambia will now shift base to Limbe where Group D will be holed up. Other teams in Group D are Tanzania, Guinea, and Namibia. Zambia’s opening game is on January 19 against Tanzania.