Zambia women’s national team head coach Bruce Mwape says he and his technical bench will need more time to assess and prepare his side for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games coming up next month.
The Copper Queens resumed residential camp last week to commence preparations for the Summer Games which expected kickstart on 25th July, 2024 in the French capital.
Speaking to journalists yesterday after taking the team through its paces at the National Heroes Stadium, the Copper Queens trainer said the technical bench needed more time to fine-tune the team to be ready for the crucial assignment.
“We just started our preparations for the Olympics last week and I cannot say the girls are ready, we still need some time to finish our program” Mwape said.
“We will communicate or let the nation know when we do our program according to our plan and we will be able to assess our players.”
Mwape who has assembled a 38-member provisional squad for the tournament, says he will need to conduct a thorough assessment of some of the players who are returning to the team after being away from action while on military training.
“We need to be given time to look at some of these players, those that are new and those who went for military training since they are back but we’ve quite a good number of players who are in camp” he said.
Meanwhile, Mwape says he is impressed with the turn out of the players who have reported for camp while awaiting the foreign-based players to link up with the rest of the squad for an international camp in France.
“We’ve got about 31 players who are in camp minus the professionals who are yet to join the team and they are about five.
“I’m sure by the time they will be joining the team we will be somewhere in France doing our final touches.”
Mwape added that he had been satisfied with the players’ level of fitness exhibited during the training camp so far.
“The few days I have been with the players [have been good] and yesterday we had a friendly with a men’s side and all we wanted was to see the level of fitness of our players” he said.
The Copper Queens have been drawn in Group B at the Olympics alongside heavyweights USA, Germany and Japan.
