adminRay Bande Senior Sports Reporter
YOUNG Warriors will kick-start a promising bid for a maiden Olympics appearance that will begin with a 2015 Caf U-23 Championship qualifying match against Swaziland at Rufaro Stadium on Sunday.The match kicks off at 3pm.
The 2015 Caf U-23 Championship qualifying rounds will decide the participating teams for the 2015 Caf U-23 Championships tournament organised by the Confederation of African Football for the Under-23 national teams of their member associations.
A total of eight teams will play in the final tournament to be hosted by Senegal.
The 2015 Caf U-23 Championship acts as qualification to the 2016 Summer Olympics men’s football tournament for Caf, with the top three teams qualifying.
The Young Warriors Class of ’15 has the potential to scale dizzy heights and to their credit they have already booked a berth in the 2015 Africa Games.
This year’s edition of the Africa Games marks the 50th anniversary of the Games as well as their return to Brazzaville, which hosted the first edition in 1965.
The Games are set for September 4–19.
By qualifying for the continental games, the Young Warriors ended 21 years of waiting to represent Zimbabwe at the All-Africa Games, with Wieslaw Grabowski’s 1995 silver medallists having been the last class to take part in the competition on home soil.
Having graduated from the national U-20 team as a unit, with the likes of Wisdom Mutasa (FC Platinum), Tatenda Mukuruva (Dynamos), Ronald Pfumbidzai (CAPS United), Pritchard Mpelele (Hwange), Raphael Kutinyu (Chicken Inn), Nyenye Diro (Harare City) and Liberty Chakoroma (Buffaloes) among others, the Young Warriors have gelled to become a formidable outfit that has potential to restore the nation’s lost pride in the game of football.
However, it is Sunday’s Caf U-23 Championship qualifying match against Swaziland in Harare that Buffaloes and Young Warriors’ defender Chakoroma believes his teammates should be concentrating on at the moment.
“We stand to achieve big things as a team, but at the moment we just have to put all our attention on the match against Swaziland. We just have to concentrate on one match at a time and to me the next match against Swaziland is all that we should be worried about at this moment in time,” said Chakoroma.
He expressed optimism that they will find their way past the Swaziland outfit.
“We have played them before and I think we have a formidable side that is able to get the result that we want as a nation. We just hope the fans will come to the stadium in their numbers and support us as we seek to raise the nation’s flag high,” he added.
The Buffaloes centre back was on national duty the entire 90 minutes in Yaoundé, Cameroon, twinning Chicken Inn’s Lawrence Mhlanga in defence before Mhlanga was injured. This resulted in Chakoroma and Dynamos’ Blessing Moyo pairing in the heart of the Young Warriors’ defence for the reminder of the match in which they upset the Cameroonians recently.
However, Chakoroma believes the performance against Cameroon, inspirational as it might have been, is now a thing of the past and they need not relax against the Swazi side.
“Yes, we played well under very difficult circumstances in Cameroon, but that is now water under the bridge. We just do not need to read too much into it. We do not have to relax against Swaziland simply because we got the better of one the strongest teams on the continent; no,” said Chakoroma.
Accordingly, Chakoroma thinks the fact that they are now used to each other in camp works to their advantage.
“We have played as a team for a long time and we now have a better understanding of each other. This will definitely work in our favour.
“We are now more of brothers and even in our play we now understand each other much, much better,” he said.
At 21, Chakoroma also believes that this is the chance as well as that of his teammates to play in the 2016 Summer Olympics men’s football tournament.
“Right now I am 21 and most of my teammates are aware of the fact that this is our chance to make history and play in the 2016 Summer Olympics men’s football tournament. We just have to qualify for the Senegal games and hope to make it to the Olympics. We are really looking forward to it and we are working extra hard to achieve that,” he said.
Online Reporter