The Zambia national football team defeated Rwanda 2 – 0 in an international friendly match played at National Heroes Stadium on Sunday.
After a goalless first half in which both sides wasted good chances, Zambia broke the deadlock on the hour mark with Rainford Kalaba tapping home at the far post from Allan Mukuka’s cross.
Mukuka, who had replaced Jackson Mwanza in the second half, registered his name on the score sheet in the 82nd minute to put the game beyond the visitors.
Here is what the two coaches and Zambia’s captain Rainford Kalaba said after the match:
Honour Janza, Coach – Zambia:
“We are happy with today’s win but we cannot get excited. There is still a lot to be done.
“It is important to maintain that attitude of not falling back or getting comfortable when when we score first. We need to kill matches by scoring another goal in order to completely disarm the opponent.
“When we score one, we have to score more goals. I see that happening in future matches because we talked about it with the players today.
“The issue of saying Zambia does not score will go away because we create chances. We could easily have scored three or four goals today.
“We need to work on the psychological aspect, we need to inculcate character and belief that one goal is not enough.
“We are have identified young players who are still inexperienced at this level. They have to gel in and ultimately we have to consolidate the team.
“We are in the process of rebuilding and it is good to have a positive result in the process because it motivates the team.
“Getting positive results will be very cardinal because it will motivate and gives us confidence going forward. It is also good for our corporate image.
“Meeting Rwanda is the same as meeting Nigeria, Ghana or any team in Africa.
“Going by their performance, I am impressed with their football; they are able to act and react; their ball technique is good, tactically they are disciplined.
“They are are youthful as well as forceful. They have what it takes for a team to be good in Africa.”
Rainford Kalaba, Captain – Zambia:
“Today’s win was important because at the Afcon in Equatorial Guinea our performance was good but we were not lucky.
“We believe that we have a good squad and if it is maintained, we only have one target; our conviction is to make it to the Fifa World Cup for the first time because we have been to the Africa Cup of Nations so many times.”
Johnny Mckinstry, Coach – Rwanda
“Overall I am reasonably satisfied with the performance. Obviously being with the team for only a week is a very short time. We worked on two or three ideas this week and for the first 70 minutes of the game I thought the players implemented that well.
“You only needed to listen to the reaction of Zambian home support at half time to understand that we had really frustrated the home team; we made it difficult for them to play which we had set out about doing. In that sense we were quite pleased.
“Obviously we consider ourselves unfortunate for the first goal; down to 10 men for a moment while we were making a substitution for injury, the home team capitalised. But that is football.
“So for the first 70 minutes we were quite pleased with the performance; in the last 20 there was indiscipline in our positional play as we tried to push for a goal ourselves.
Overall we had a good game. Rwanda is a young team. We had a good start and we have something to build upon.”
Source: Faz Football