Angola women’s national team coach Sousa Garcia has maintained his team will try to do everything they can not to lose by a huge margin against Zambia in their return leg of the Africa Cup of Nations qualifier on Tuesday.
A modest but straight-talking Garcia told a media briefing at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola that Zambia was 10 years ahead of Angola in terms of women’s football development. Garcia said Angola did not lose 6-0 to Zambia because of being poor but just played a superior opponent. “My hope is to win and to win is not always to score because as I said before I think my players will win more compared to the Zambian players in terms of growth, in terms of result we hope to win too,” he said.
“The difference between football and maths is that in maths two plus two is equal to four while in football it is not like that. Even if Zambia is stronger than us, we can win but of course, the chances are low.”
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He added: “If we can win God bless you, if not we will try to draw of course. We gonna try to draw, if not we can lose by a small difference not like 6-0 at least 1-0. But as I said before we will win no matter what.”
Garcia said Zambia was way ahead with a running league while Angola was yet to establish a league. “In terms of competition, Zambia has a women’s league, Angola does not have, and secondly, even if you have a league, you need to have a competitive league. Zambia has so many players playing abroad in Spain, China. We do not have any,” he said.
“The problem is not the way we play but the state of women’s development in our country. We are building a process maybe we need to be patient maybe in the future, we can come here to compete for face to face. For us it is not about the result, we know where we are in the process, we are building a process, if we look at the scale of 1-10, we are two and Zambia are at seven.”
The Copper Queens host Angola at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in the return leg of the final leg on Tuesday. Zambia will carry a 6-0 first-leg advantage and are one foot into their third consecutive WAFCON qualification.