UNDER 20 FOCUS ON AFCON QUALIFIERS

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 13:43:10 +0000

By MICHAEL MIYOBA 

THE Zambia Under-20 national soccer team has promised to do better during the 2019 Under-20 AfCON qualifiers in a bid to defend the title.

In an interview after Zambia was eliminated from the ongoing 2017 Mopani Copper Mines COSAFA Under-20 youth championship in Kitwe, team captain Prince Mumba said the team understood the fans’ displeasure in a goalless draw against Malawi.

Mumba said the team was not frustrated after failing to defend the COSAFA youth title.  He said the boys had learnt lessons from their failure at COSAFA and would use the experience to become a better squad.

“We are not very disappointed for having been eliminated from the group stages. That’s how football is. You lose some and win some. It is a lesson for us and we have learnt one or two things from the tournament. We just look toward to what the future holds for us.

“We will just have to do better in the AfCON qualifiers. I know we will be able to do well because by then we will have known each other very well and we will have enough time to prepare ourselves,” Mumba said.

The young Kabwe Warriors player is also confident of snatching this year’s MTN-FAZ young player of the year award where he has been pitted against Mufulira Wanderers’ Chrispin Sakulanda and Lameck Banda.

Meanwhile two goal hero in Zambia’s game against Swaziland, Francisco Mwepu- younger brother of midfield maestro Enock Mwepu, said he was proud of his performance in the last match.

Mwepu, who missed a number of chances before scoring his brace in the second half of Zambia’s last group A fixture, said he was not playing under pressure to perform like his brother did at the AfCON and at the South Korea World Cup where Zambia was eliminated in the quarter-final stage