NATIONAL senior women football coach Rosemary Mugadza says her team’s friendly matches against Egypt last week exposed her squad’s weaknesses which need to be rectified before they engage Botswana in the African Women Championships first round qualifier in three weeks time.
BY HENRY MHARA SPORTS REPORTER
The Mighty Warriors played two friendlies against Egypt last week, losing the first one 3-2 on Wednesday before coming back from a goal down to snatch a 2-1 victory in the second game on Saturday. The team arrived back into the country yesterday afternoon.
Before their trip to Cairo, which concluded their preparations, the mighty warriors had also played preparatory matches against South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania and Lesotho (thrice).
Interestingly, if Zimbabwe sail past Botswana, whose first leg encounter is set for Gaborone on the weekend of February 13-15, they will meet the winner between Tanzania and Zambia in the second and final qualifying round.
Mugadza said she is happy with the preparations, but said the team still needs some serious fine-tuning before travelling to Gaborone.
“There are a lot of areas that we still need to work on. Against Egypt the girls were not comfortable on the ball and were not moving the ball quickly as we would have wanted,” said Mugadza.
“All the departments need to be revisited, but our major worry is the strikeforce. We created a lot of chances, but failed to convert them. We were, however, encouraged by the team’s character in the second game in Cairo when the team came from a goal behind and a player down to win the match. ”
