Copper Queens plot Malawi’s fall

SUN SPORTS writes@SunZambianZAMBIA National women’s team coach Bruce Mwape says the Copper Queens will fight to beet Malawi to reach the semifinals of the 2020 COSAFA Senior Women’s Championship in South Africa.Mwape said today’s game against Group B topper Malawi is a must win for the Copper Queens whose target is to win the COSAFA Championship after finishing as runner up during the 2019 edition.He said morale is in camp with the girls looking forward to face Malawi after successful training sections following the 8-0 thumping of Lesotho in the first Group B game.“This one is a must win we don’t want to draw because they have an advantage of one goal against us so for us to qualify to the semifinals we need a win so we will try by all means to play an attacking game,” Mwape said.“We want to go as far as the finals and like I said the COSAFA are part of our preparations for the Olympics games so we would want to play all the games up to the end.”Meanwhile, Mwape has spoken highly of team captain Barbara Banda who was exceptional in the opening game against Lesotho when she scored a hat trick and was named player of the match.Barbara is our captain and of course one of the key players, she has been around for some time now graduating from the juniors to the senior team and she has really improved as a professional player and this time she has gained so much experience, every other team we are going to meet they will fear her because everyone is now talking about her because she is playing good football,” he said.Mwape further said people should expect a lot from her in this tournament.He insists that the Copper Queens are not intimidated by Malawi who beat Lesotho 9-0 to set up a cracking tie against Zambia.“The Malawian team played well against Lesotho although they were banking on one player who scored six goals the other three goals were shared, it only shows they were banking on one player for them to win games but looking at their performance the game against them will be a 50/50 affair,” Mwape said.And Copper Queens’ goalkeeper Hazel Nali has promised Zambians a win with another clean sheet at the regional championship.“So far so good we are playing as a team and everything has been done by the coaches. “My personal target is to always keep a clean sheet and I’m focused and looking forward to the game against Malawi. We will work as a team and fight hard to give Zambians a win,” Nali said.A win over Malawi will propel Zambia to the Semi Finals of the regional completion while a defeat will dump Zambia out though they would still have a chance to qualify as the best losers. The Sun