Zambia stronger than us – Ngoya

By Henry Mbewe | September 9, 2019

Zambia U23 National Team on Sunday played out to a 3 all draw against Congo Brazzaville to qualify for U23 AFCON to be held later this year in Egypt.

The then-head coach who has since resigned Jean Elie Ngoya believes his team lacked the instinct to score a lot of goals.

“At 1-0 I asked my players to continue playing, I reviewed the Zambian team and I knew that they can come and equalize, in Lusaka at the first press conference I compared this team to a snake that was sleeping and to kill it you have to score more goals. You see during the game we lucked these actions to score and that made our game difficult,” he told the ZAMFOOT Crew.

“You know to reach this stage of the competition is enough for us,” he added.

Ngoya alluded to the fact that the Zambia U23 national team have been together for a long time and his team had only been together for 9 months hence the result.

“This Zambia you have seen have been together for 5 years, they won the Afcon U20 and qualified to the U20 world cup in 2017. This my team I made it in 9 months please go and think again,” he said.

“What you are saying is not wrong, the same team we played in Lusaka but different players, sometimes they are good sometimes they are bad,” he added.

Enock Mwepu scored a brace while Patson Daka chipped in with a goal to help the team force a 3-3 draw and win 5-4 on aggregate to book a place at the U23 AFCON tournament.

The top 3 teams at the tournament automatically qualify to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.