Lucky Msiska will face his first major international test as Zambia Under-23 coach in January when his side takes on trans-Zambezi rivals Zimbabwe in a 2011 All-Africa Games football tournament preliminary stage qualifier.
Zambia will host Zimbabwe in the first leg on January 8 in Lusaka in the first leg of the Zone 6 qualifiers for the Mozambique All-Africa Games to be held from September 3-18.
Msiska’s side will come up against a Zimbabwean side expected to be led by their hot-shot Kaizer Chiefs attacker Knowledge Musona and Young Brave Warriors starlet striker Denver Mukamba of Kiglon who lit-up the Cosafa Youth Championship in Botswana with four goals to win bronze.
The two sides will later meet in the return leg to be played during the weekend of January 21-23 with the winner advancing to the first round qualifying stage to face either Swaziland or Botswana.
Winner of this first round two-way qualifying tie will advance to the second Zone 6 final round qualifying stage to face winner of the Malawi/Lesotho and Angola/Namibia first round match-up.
The second round winner will qualify as Zone 6 representative to join hosts Mozambique at the All-Africa Games football finals.
Zambia has been to four successive All-Africa Games tournaments.
They failed to advance to the semifinals at the 1995 finals in Zimbabwe but won silver under the late Ben Bamfuchile in 1999 in South Africa.
Zambia finished fourth at the 2003 in Nigeria and 2007 in Algeria tournaments under Peter Kaumba.
Meanwhile, the women’s team will also face Zimbabwe in the All-Africa Games qualifiers with their campaigning kicking off in February away in Harare.
The winner of the preliminary round match will face Angola in the first round to battle it out for a final place at the Maputo event.
Shouldn’t the national coach (Bonetti in this case) be in charge of all teamz reprezenting Zambia and just be assisted by one or two localz at each category?
We need to groom Local Coaches starting with Msiska to take over the reigns at all national teams. We should be tired of these money hungry vultures, so called Coaches
Lucky is the official U23 coach.
WHAT ABOUT OUR ARSENAL IN THE NAME OF MAYUKA,MBOLA,FWAYO ,JUSTINE ZULU ,RODGER KOLA,WILLIAM NJOBVI AND SUNZO WHEN ARE THEY FEATURING IN U23?