Grant Proud Of Chipolopolo Despite Morocco Defeat

At the press conference, Grant said the team was punished for two errors. Despite this, he believed they played well overall. He made these comments after the match.

“But of course football is about mistakes, the mistake in the first half was the only chance of Morocco but I think Zambia can be proud at the end of the day,” he said.

“We are not one of the top teams in Africa, like we want to be,  but we are on the way to being there and you saw today a strong team and a good team but sometimes it happens.”

He added, “Morocco is number 24 in the world and one of the first two teams in Africa, they came here but we were much better than them. As a coach it is difficult to analyze this game because on the football side we closed them down and they did not create any chances. They didn’t score from attack but from the first goal where we made a mistake and second from 30 meters that we were not awake and these were the only two chances from Morocco.”

Grant said he was optimistic about the progress of the team given the many prospective young players from Europe that were breaking into the squad.

“We are trying because we don’t have enough players in Europe but now we have young players that play in Spain and Italy they are our future. You can agree with me that players from Europe are better because of the better pitches and better intensity against better players,” he said.

“This is a fact, we play at different times in this game,  but look, Zambia has never gone to the FIFA world cup and I don’t believe that you just push a button and we will be at the world cup.”

The Chipolopolo suffered a 2-0 defeat at home to Morocco in a Group E encounter at a packed Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola.

Zambia will wind up the FIFA World Cup campaign next month against Niger and Tanzania.