admin
Mehluli Sibanda in Moruleng, South Africa
ZAMBIA Under-20 football team coach Beston Chambeshi has given an honest assessment of the Zimbabwean side which participated in the just ended Cosafa tournament, stating that the Young Warriors lacked coordination.
Chambeshi, who led his country’s juniors to an 11th Cosafa title at Moruleng Stadium in North West, South Africa on Friday evening, said he feels pity for his Zimbabwean counterpart Mandla “Lulu” Mpofu. The Zambian coach’s advice to Mpofu is to hold training sessions with his team at least three days a week seeing that some of the Under-20 players are not being fielded on a regular basis by their Premier Soccer League clubs.
“Especially to my colleague who is handling the youth team, it’s not easy some of these teams in the Super League are not using these
Under-20 players and you find there is no strong league in our system.
All I can say if they can try give the coach some days, three days in a week to coach the players so that he can start gelling them and knowing them that’s the most important thing but if you stay long without putting together the result is difficult. I saw Zimbabwe, they are a good team they are good players, but that coordination was not there so you can tell that maybe they didn’t stay long in camp, they know each other that well, I think they have to learn a lesson from this tournament,’’ said Chambeshi.
On the kind of preparations heading into the Cosafa Under-20, Chambeshi revealed that they started training as far back as August. He was also grateful to the Football Association of Zambia for facilitating that his team arrive early in South Africa to play a practice match against SuperSport Under-20 in Johannesburg.
“We started in August it wasn’t easy some of these players who don’t play in the Super League they are from academies, we had to assemble the team in readiness for this tournament, we played our local Premier League teams we learnt a lot from them and for sure that’s where we get our strength for those preparations.
Lastly I can say we are happy with our association they had to fight for a friendly game against Under-20 SuperSport here in South Africa so we came early and played a game there and managed to beat SuperSport Under-20. I think that’s where our strength was. We arrived on Saturday before the tournament started on a Wednesday and played on Sunday against SuperSport in Johannesburg,’’ said Chambeshi.
With Zambia hosting the Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations early next year, Chambeshi believes that winning the Cosafa Youth Championship has given them momentum do well at home.
Mpofu, who cried foul at the amount of time his team spent in camp before heading to South Africa, can certainly learn a lot from the way Zambia prepared for the tournament.
The Nelson Chadya led Young Warriors were booted out of the tournament at group stage. They lost 5-1 to Zambia before they drew 0-0 with Malawi. When Zambia beat Malawi 3-0 last Sunday, Zimbabwe returned home as they finished bottom of the log.
— @Mdawini_29
Online Reporter