Amajita South Africa U20 have jetted-in for Sunday’s junior international friendly against Zambia at Nkoloma Stadium in Lusaka.
The friendly is Zambia’s final warm-up match before they host Burundi on July 14 at the same venue in a 2019 U20 AFCON final round, first leg qualifier.
Zambia lost 1-0 at the same venue to Malawi on July 1 in their first friendly.
Malawi, incidentally, are South Africa’s opponents in their final round decider this coming weekend at home.
Amajita coach Thabo Senong said upon arrival on Friday night in Lusaka that he was hoping the 2017 U20 AFCON champions will give them a good test before getting down to business end of things this weekend.
“We have just come from the off -season so we are really unfit. So we just felt that it was important if we could play a friendly game so that we can bring our players to their best close to our game against Malawi,” Senong said.
“We chose Zambia as the best opponents because Zambia has the necessary quality players and they can actually give us an idea of what to expect against Malawi.
“Honestly the result of these friendly’s don’t reflect what will happen in the qualifiers.
“When you play friendly’s, you focus on the performance of the team, the implementation of the tactics and the process of your principles. Result’s don’t matter that much.”
We shall never have an u20 team like the2017 team in years to come! The preparation for that team was professionally arranged and excited!
Never say Never ROKA. We had in the past a good under 20 of the likes of Moses Sichone, Andrew Sinkala(Zambia’s most expensive player at the time and don’t know if record has been broken). The one you are talking about is not the last. The best is still coming. What we will never have are the players of u20 2017