Mubukwanu Kaingu
Zambia women’s national team coach Bruce Mwape is confident the tournament experience his team has gained over the last five years will show in their second Olympic Games outing next month.
The team will be making its second successive Olympic appearance after their debut in Japan in 2021 where they made a group stage exit.
Zambia is in Group B together with World Cup runners-up Australia, 2016 Olympic golden medal winners Germa y and the tournament’s record four-time Olympic champions USA.
Mwape said in an interview in Lusaka as the team completed its second week of preliminary training camp that they were slowly making progress towards the July kickoff at the Paris Olympics.
“In fact, for us to be in that group it means that we are almost at the same level so even the players now have that experience and I am sure that they don’t also concentrate or listen to what people are saying,” Mwape said.
“All that we want is to just focus on the games and as far as I am concerned going back to the Olympics we need to improve our performance.”
Zambia drew one and lost their other two group games at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
A FIFA Women’s World Cup debut followed after reaching the knocked stage at WAFCON for the first time with a third-place finish and are now also heading for their third successive African championship campaign in 2025.
” It was the first time and this is the second time and most of the players have that experience to withstand any pressure so they just have to focus on the three games, ” Mwape said.
Zambia will kick off their Olympics campaign on July 25 against the USA and play Australia on July 28, both will be debut meetings.
They will then face Germany on July 31 in what will be the two sides’ second meeting since Zambia beat them in a pre-World Cup friendly last year.
Meanwhile, Mwape said they are looking forward to their pre-Olympics camp in the host nation France where two friendly matches are yet to be confirmed.
