Road to Tokyo 2020- Wasteful Zambia edge Botswana

By Moses Mwanza | October 3, 2019

The Zambia Women’s National team on Wednesday edged the Mares of Botswana 1-nil in the 3rd round the first leg of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Qualifier to secure a hard-fought victory.

The Bruce Mwape drilled side who found the back of the net through Green Buffaloes Women’s Football Club creative Midfielder Mary Mwakapila in the 20th Minute connecting well from a Grace Chanda cross could have themselves to blame for missing a number of scoring opportunities especially in the first half to bury the tie going into the return fixture next week.

Going into this match The Copper Queens eliminated the Warriors of Zimbabwe while Botswana edged South Africa in the 2nd round which meant that there was a lot of expectation ahead of this match.

Mwape made 3 changes to the starting line up that played Zimbabwe in the previous round, at the heart of Defence Nkwazi Queens Center Back Lushomo Mweemba replaced Anita Mulenga to Partner with Vast Phiri while Racheal Kundananji and Misozi Zulu’s Positions were taken up by Judy Zulu and Barbra Banda Captain of the side who returned to the National side having missed a couple of games.

Both sides had a share of missed chances with the Copper Queens having a bigger chunk of those.

Speaking in a Post-Match briefing after the game, Coach Mwape wasn’t happy with the result because it did not go as planned especially failing to convert their chances but he is optimistic his side will qualify for the next round.

“We won the game but we are not happy with the result because we planned to win by a good margin. In the first half we had created a lot of chances about 3 or 4 sure chances but they actually went begging but that doesn’t mean we are out even 1 Zero we can always defend and qualify to the next round,” he said.

Meanwhile, his Botswana counterpart Gaoletho Ronaldoh Nkutwisa said she’s not worried about the one-nil loss and will reorganize her team for the return match to emulate the performance displayed in the second half.

“It was a good game we lost 1 zero not a bad result on our side we will go back and see where we did not do well but all in all we gave them room in the midfield that made us disorganized at the back then they created a goal and they scored in the first half. But the second half we played well so will go back and reorganize ourselves,” Nkutwisa said.

Zambia and Botswana will meet once again for the return match next week on Tuesday 8th October 2019 at Francis Town Sports Complex in Botswana to determine who progresses to the 4th round of the Olympics Qualifiers.