Former Mighty Warriors coach Benedict Moyo rates the current senior national womens football team as the best that has been assembled ever.
Moyos assessment came after watching the Rosemary Mugadza- coached squad beating Botswana 1-0 in the Caf African Women Championships first leg qualifier at the University of Botswana on Saturday.
That win, courtesy of an Erina Jeke header early in the second half, put Mugadzas team in the driving seat going into the reverse fixture set for Harare next week.
However, the Zifa board member (competitions) was quick to point out the team still has a lot of work if they are to compete at the same level with African superpowers like Nigeria.
The Mighty Warriors will face the Super Falcons of Nigeria in the first and last round of qualifiers if they go past Botswana.
The previous squads had exceptional but individual talents. They were not a complete team, but were just aggressive. There were not many good players then, but they were always hungry, they had this burning desire to win. In terms of quality and technique, the current team is much better.
What that means is if they could be a bit more aggressive in terms of their approach to the game, they could surpass all the previous teams. The problem is that they still feel very feminine; they need to change that mindset completely, said Moyo.
Moyo, who was coach of the star-studded Mighty Warriors team that had current coach Mugadza, Precious Gringo Mpala, Ruth Banda now married to Mamelodi Sundowns veteran Esrom Nyandoro and the popular Sithethelelwe Kwinji 15 Sibanda, rates former Mighty Warriors skipper Nomsa Boyz Moyo as the best female footballer there was in the country.
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Boyz retired from international football last year and is now player-coach for womens Super league team New Orleans. She has also been drafted into the Mighty Warriors technical team as a kit manager.
We had great female football players before and we have Marjoury Nyaumwe in the current team. She is exceptional and a great talent. But in my opinion Nomsa is the best that we have seen so far.
She was aggressive, tough and strong. She could win a game for us on her own.
She could score from some 40m out which I have not seen being done by any woman footballer in this country.
Marjoury has still that opportunity to do better. She is in the same class with Nomsa, but needs to be a bit aggressive, said Moyo.
On the prospect of meeting African giants Nigeria in the first and final round of qualifiers, Moyo said: We are going to beat Botswana in the reverse fixture and we will play Nigeria in the next round.
Remember, we have never beaten them before and they have never scored less than four goals every time we played them.
I remember them beating us 5-2 in Nigeria before beating us
7-0 here at Rufaro. What that means is we need to prepare very well for that tie. We need a long camp and more international friendlies to prepare for that match. Like I said before we already have the technique and the physique to match any team in Africa, but there are areas which need to be rectified in the team.
Our defence is not intact and we have very short players defensively, we need to improve in that department, added Moyo.
