Zesco United on Monday completed day-one of their 10-day training camp in Johannesburg.
The 2016 CAF Champions League semifinalist landed in Johannesburg on Sunday where they will hold a camp until February 22.
“The team has settled well at Garden Court Eastgate and training Bedfordview Country Club,” Zesco media officer Katebe Chengo said from south africa.
However, all but one of the 31-member team was part of full training under new coach Zlatko Krmpotic.
Defender Simon Silwimba has been restricted to light training due to a groin injury.
Chengo added that friendly matches at the Zesco camp in South Africa will be announced in due course.
Zesco will represent Zambia in the 2017 CAF Confederation Cup after finishing second behind Zanaco during the 2016 FAZ Super Division campaign.
Zesco, who are on bye in the Confederation Cup, await the outcome of the preliminary round tie between KVZ of Zanzibar and Le Ngozi Messanger from Burundi.
KVZ lead Ngozi 2-1 from the first leg played on Sunday in Zanzibar and a draw away this weekend in Bujumbura will see them visit Zesco in the first round, first leg on March 11 in Ndola.
This is another example of why we dont move forward…here is ZESCO who may have won some consolation prize (little change from being semi-finalists) and now are spending big ABROAD…instead of investing the same infrastructure they are being attracted to in RSA…when are we going to change did we not learnt anything from FAZ and the wasteful Galu years!!
Ba Jay Jay, pre-season training camps are done by almost all the big cubs world over. Despite having excellent training facilities at their bases, many clubs opt to travel out for various reasons. A couple of days ago, Spartak Moscow the club Fashion Sakala (Zambian soccer player) will soon be joining spent weeks camping in Cyprus. Barcelona have camped in SA, China, Taiwan before….the list of many clubs roll on. In short, your statement in somewhat asinine.
So is the budget of those clubs similar to ZESCO…you are comparing clubs with a 100 million dollar budget to yours!!
Jay Jay: To some extent I support your view. Barcelona and them other big clubs already have suitable facilities at their home bases. In some cases these big clubs camp outside to satisfy their support base and for marketing purposes. ZESCO (with load shedding here) can not afford to spend so much money outside the country when they even don’t own a stadium. My guess is that there are camping RSA purely because of beautiful facilities there. Unfortunately, allowances for the team management staff speak volumes. It is so unfortunate. Oh by the way no team from RSA sets camp in Zambia. Why?
tHIS COACH NEEDS TO BE FIRED, HE RECOMMENDS EXPENSIVE VENUES FOR TRAINING, WHATS WRONG SENDING ZESCO TEAM TO TRAIN IN MY VILLAGE MOGOYE WHERE WE CAN SERVE THEM WITH MABISI
Back in the day teams used to go to Mongu, Livingstone to train!!