14 Sep 2022

The national Under 20 football team is expected to progress from Group A in the 2022 COSAFA Under-20 championship to be held in eSwatini next month.

The team will face Zambia, eSwatini and Mauritius. The tournament will also be used to qualify teams for the 2023 Total Energies AFCON U-20 tournament in Egypt. The top two teams in the tournament will automatically qualify.

National U-20 coach, Innocent Ranku, said in an interview that the draw was fair considering the countries they were pitted against.

He noted that Zambia was the only country ranked above Botswana and that he knew their style of play, adding they used the same approach in all their national teams. He said Mauritius was a closed book to them, but Botswana was confident of victory against them.

Ranku also said most of the U-20 Zambian players were already playing in their elite league and that they would have to dig deep when they faced them.

As for eSwatini, Ranku said they had played a friendly against them and he had a plan for them.

The coach said preparing for the tournament was a challenge because most of his players were not playing in the elite league and that others did not have enough game time in their respective leagues.

He said another challenge was that they used the same players with the Under 23 team who were preparing for the Olympic qualifiers.

“I cannot say I have players at the moment and the competition is just around the corner. I do not know what is going to happen,” he said.

He said his goal was to reach the semi-finals and ultimately finish in a respectable position in the competition. Ranku said with good preparations, he was confident that they could make history and qualify for U-20 AFCON.

Group B is made up of Mozambique, Angola, Seychelles and Lesotho while Group C comprises of Namibia, South Africa, Comoros and Malawi. ENDS