Young Warriors in tricky Cosafa draw

Ricky Zililo Senior Sports Reporter
THE Young Warriors have been drawn in a tricky Cosafa Senior Men’s Challenge Cup group where they will face Tanzania and Namibia who are better ranked than them on the Fifa table.Tanzania who caused the disbandment of the Warriors last year after knocking them out of the 2015 Afcon qualifiers are ranked 107th in the world with Namibia on 111 while Warriors are a disappointing 119.

According to a draw conducted on Thursday evening, Zimbabwe who are sending the national Under-23 team to the championships that will run from May 17-31 in South Africa’s North West Province also have 125th ranked Lesotho in their pool.

Only the winner of the group will proceed to the quarter-finals where they will face defending champions Zambia.

Reacting to the draw yesterday, the Young Warriors assistant coach Nation Dube said they will need time to train together as a team if they are to reach the last eight.

He is wary of Tanzania who caused an upset on the Warriors.

“It’s a tough group according to my assessment because we’ve teams that are better ranked than us. I think the problem that we have is not knowing how to plan in terms of going into camp together for a longer period than we did in our last trips to Botswana and Morocco. Then we only met two days before the game and trained once but if we can get longer time in camp then we can work something out,” said Dube.

The hastily assembled Young Warriors last year played three friendly matches beating Swaziland 2-0 in their backyard, lost 1-0 to Botswana during their Independence Celebrations Cup and fought a losing battle with Morocco who had a host of international players.