Barbra Banda bagged a first half brace as Zambia silenced South Africa 3-0 in a women’s international friendly at Nkoloma Stadium in Lusaka on Saturday.
The Copper Queens suffered a 3-1 defeat against Banyana Banyana in a test match last April in Johannesburg, but this time, the former leveraged their home advantage to pip their visitors ahead of final qualifying ties for TotalEnergies Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, Morocco 2022.
The Zambians started the better side with Banda marking her return since her remarkable Tokyo 2020 Olympics to the Copper Queens‘ fold in style, firing the hosts in front with just six minute into the encounter.
The home team maintained their pouring attacks and found another breakthrough on the half hour mark when Avell Chitundu got on the scoresheet to double the lead for Bruce Mwape’s side.
Banda profited from Zambia’s opening half dominance to grab her second and her team’s third of the match and finished off helpless Desiree Ellis’ side nine minutes from half time break.
The morale-boosting result saw Zambia make a bright start to the year 2022 ahead of their final qualifying round, first leg tie with Namibia at home on 16 February.
On the other hand, South Africa will look to recover in time to avoid another upset when they welcome Algeria at the Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg on 18 February.
What they said
Desiree Ellis (Coach of South Africa):
I think we didn’t pitch today. We said that they are going to find Barbra [Banda] and it happened that way. We didn’t cover up for each other, we didn’t cope well with the long ball. Sometimes when you play, you have one department not working but in this match, all our departments were not working. We had a much better second half but it was really not good enough. We were very poor today. It was good playing this match to see what we need to do going forward what we still need to work on. This match helped us a lot to see what we can take forward and areas we need to improve on.
Bruce Mwape (Coach of Zambia):
We did play well in the first half, and coming in the second half, we struggled, especially up front, although the defense was solid. South Africa was good tactically and able to hold ball possession for some time. This is an area we are lacking and hope to improve on.
Source: CAF