Zambia U17 Women’s National Team head coach Carol Kanyemba says her team will not give up and will keep fighting until the final game of the group. Kanyemba was speaking after Copper Princesses succumbed to a 2-1 loss at the hands of Paraguay in a match characterized by defensive errors. Kanyemba says her team needs to work on their concentration and that they will pick up from their second half which is a much improved showcase in comparison to their first 45 minutes. The Green Buffaloes Women’s Football Club assistant coach is aware of the big challenge that awaits the team in the last two games against Japan and New Zealand. “We need a lot of concentration at the back and in the goal, our goalkeeper was a bit jittery, we still have to psych her, as you know this is a developmental stage and we’ve seen the errors, We going back to the drawing board, we are going to work on them but overall in the second half they were able to pick up and we did much better and we’re going to pick up from the second half performance and work on the errors that we encountered in the first half,” she said. “Definitely it’s not an easy path going forward, knowing Japan and also New Zealand these are teams that have been at this stage for a long time and Paraguay was one of the teams that we really had to get maximum points from but every game is different, our players are different, we’re going to talk to the girls, we continue working on our mistakes and training so that we can try as much as possible to get best results from the two games that are remaining, knowing that we need about 16 teams to qualify into the next round, we’re still going to push. We’re not giving up, we’re fighting up to the final game of the group so that we see how far we can go.” Goalkeeper Mary Nyangu made a big error as she conceded the equalizer from a very tame shot, scoring an own goal and then also conceding the second goal from the near post. Coach Carol Kanyemba however came to her aid saying jitters at this stage ( The FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup) is normal and that’s why the team needed a lot of friendly games to get rid of stage flight and jitters. “Mistakes are normal in football, jitteriness at this stage is normal and that’s the more important of playing a lot of friendly games so that that jitteriness is removed from the girls. So we’ve played this game, we’ve picked up our lessons, we’ve removed some of the jitteriness that the girls had and going into the Japan game, regardless of the results that we got last year, it’s a new game altogether, we’re going to face it as we face it and the girls that we have are different, some with a positive attitude, some that showed negative attitude, we’re going to talk to them, we’re going to work on them and we continue building the team from here,” She said. Victoria Mbali put Zambia in the lead before own goals from Mary Nyangu and Nana Malanda had Paraguay in front and helped them to their historic first World Cup win. Skipper Mercy Chipasula missed a penalty late in the match while Mbali also missed a good chance late on. Next up for the Copper Princesses is the group leaders Japan who saw off New Zealand 3-0 in their opening game.
