admin
Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
AFTER progressing to the first round of the Under-20 Women World Cup, Zimbabwe coach Rosemary Mugadza believes the team needs at least a month in camp to prepare for the tougher rounds.
Zimbabwe will meet Ethiopia in the first round of the African World Cup football qualifiers after beating Malawi 2-1 on aggregate at the weekend. The global junior women’s football tournament will be held in Costa Rica and Panama in August.
And the qualification path is not easy for the African teams that have to satisfy four gruelling rounds with the last two standing teams booking their tickets to Central America. The Young Mighty Warriors will travel to Addis Ababa on the weekend of March 20 to 22 before they host the East Africa side a week later.
Yesterday, a buoyant Mugadza, who capped a good week in which she was appointment a CAF instructor, said there is no time to rest if they want to make an impact in the World Cup qualifiers.
“We are happy that we managed to progress to the first round of the World Cup. We will have ample time to prepare before we engage Ethiopia.
“We need at least a maximum three to four weeks in camp to keep the players in shape since it’s still off-season.
“We will sit down as the technical team then present our proposals to the association and a team we would like to play with as part of our preparations,” said Mugadza.
The veteran coach said some of their players are still school-going age and likely to have other academic plans hence they will do a roll call soon and establish who will remain with the team.
“The Under-20 is a school-going age-group, so it’s a bit tricky we need to know who will remain with the team as some have just collected their results and might be pursuing academic interests.
“So we need to beef-up each and every department because the intensity of the matches has increased as competition gets tougher so we need to adequately prepare.
“Against Malawi we chose players we have previously worked with at the COSAFA tournament last year but I believe there are some talented players out there we can add on to the squad,” Mugadza said.
The former Mighty Warriors skipper said they will sit down as the technical team soon to make their proposals to ZIFA for a preparatory match before they engage Ethiopia. Ethiopia are a strong opponent who beat Burundi 5-0 in their backyard.
They were scheduled to host Burundi in the reverse tie yesterday.
Results
Senegal 0, Sierra Leone 0 (Senegal win 1 – 0 on aggregate); Botswana 2, Namibia 0 (Botswana win 9-0 on aggregate); Zimbabwe 1, Malawi 0 (Zimbabwe win 2-1 on aggregate); South Africa 2, Zambia 2 (South Africa win 4 – 0 on aggregate); Uganda 1 – Tanzania 2 (Tanzania win 2-4 on aggregate); Guinea 5 – Liberia 4 (Liberia win 5 -7 on aggregate); Gambia 0, Burkina Faso 0 (Burkina Faso win 3-2 on aggregate); Senegal 0, Sierra Leone 0 (Senegal win 1 -0 on aggregate).
Online Reporter