admintheir opening match tomorrow.
After a long haul flight which took them from South Africa to Brazil on Saturday night following a shorter trip between Harare and Johannesburg earlier in the afternoon, they found themselves having to juggle with the mathematics of the five-hour difference between the two countries when they touched down at Guarulhos Airport. According to Zimbabwean time, the Mighty Warriors arrived in Sao Paulo at 4am on Sunday, but had a 10-hour lay off at the airport as South America is five hours behind.
As the players began to adjust to the time difference here they took up to the airport benches to try and catch some sleep while waiting for their connecting flight to Uruguay capital, Montevideo which was scheduled for yesterday morning.
But more fatigue was expected to creep into the Zimbabwean team who were scheduled to undertake another two-hour flight to connect from Brazil to Uruguay, albeit, in two batches.
The second batch was only expected to arrive at Carrasco Airport in Montevideo at 4pm the local time here and 9pm Zimbabwean time.
Both groups were expected to wait for each other at the Uruguay airport in order to embark on a 110 km road trip to Maldonado where the team would be based, leaving coach Rosemary Mugadza and her charges with only the early hours of tomorrow to get some decent rest.
The Mighty Warriors have been breaking new ground and are the first national soccer side to tour this continent which is south of the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the sporting activity here has been confined to football especially the Fifa World Cup and Uruguay were the first country to host it the global soccer showcase at its infancy in 1930. Maybe and just maybe, the Mighty Warriors’ presence in Uruguay could spell a good omen for their male counterparts — the Warriors —who have a big battle on their hands to try and qualify for the 2014 World Cup to be staged in Brazil.
The Warriors still to qualify for the World Cup got their campaign for one of the five African tickets to the tournament, off to a terrible start under Rahman Gumbo last year.
Two qualifying assignments against Guinea at home and Mozambique away yielded just one point off their 0-0 draw against the Mambas in Maputo and with only the top teams in each group progressing to the final round of qualifiers, it is still a tall order for new coach Klaus Dieter Pagels to revive that qualification dream.
But for the Mighty Warriors, their arrival in Uruguay will present them with a chance to sample the famed South American game.
Mighty Warriors assistant coach Yohanne Chikaola dismissed suggestions that their team are an occasional side, which just regroups whenever they are preparing for an upcoming match. We are here and we are going to be subjected to a different type of play and that should benefit us. We are developing a team and we are not an occasional team which just goes into camp when they have a match.
“Football is all about preparations and we are participating here with future tournaments such as the Cosafa in mind.
“As we are playing the opposition we don’t know, we will wait and see and as the game progresses we will take it up from there. We were able to google some information about their national team and we established that they have young strikers born around 1994 and may have pace but their defence has older players and it’s a bit tricky so will see their approach,” said Chikaola.
The Cyclone Queens coach said the absence of their key strikers Rudo Neshamba and Rufaro Machingura would not affect them much and expects those that have made the trip to deliver.
Online Reporter