Nora explains decision to send B team to COSAFW

By Kalumiana Kalumiana

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‎Zambia women’s national team coach Nora Hauptle has explained why she will not use next month’s COSAFA Women’s Cup as 2026 WAFCON build-up up but will instead send her B side for the regional tournament that will be held in South Africa from February 18 to March 1.

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‎The COSAFA Women’s Cup will precede the WAFCON which will kick off in Morocco on March 17 to April 3.

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‎Hauptle told FAZ Media in an interview after Thursday’s training that the idea not to field the 2026 WAFCON team was a technical decision so that her Team A would focus on a pre-tournament camp in the United Arab Emirates.

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‎The COSAFA is a senior tournament, but it’s colliding with the international FIFA window in February. It starts a week earlier and crosses one week of the international window, so we are not able to send our international teams to the COSAFA. So the decision we took is, it’s a chance to participate in the COSAFA, so we will from the big group of players we have here, we have around 40 players here, we have more than 10 internationals, we split, we take the WAFCON squad on the international window and the other part of the squad we send to COSAFA,” Hauptle said.

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‎Zambia is the defending champion of the COSAFA Women’s Cup.

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‎Hauptle said a decision as to who will be in charge of the COSAFA Women’s Cup team has yet to be finalized.

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‎”We are in discussion now on how we solve it, either we send our local assistant coach Charles Haalubono to the COSAFA or we adjust another coach, we are still in discussions on how we can solve it,” She said.

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‎” The international players get in the window that we can play three games on a very high level, so in my planning, I outlined the tournament in Dubai, where we need to prove ourselves against top 30 nations and in Dubai, we couldn’t even face this height of opponents or the strength of opponents and we needed to be well prepared for that. And then we have, besides the COSAFA the other part of the local players who can improve there and also prove themselves in case we have an injury we can also switch over a player, so that’s how we’re going to manage it.”

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‎Zambia are in Group C at the WAFCON in Morocco where they have been drawn against Egypt, Malawi and defending champions Nigeria.

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