In an international friendly game played in Abu Dhadi last night, Zambia, the 2012 African Champions, suffered a 1-0 loss to Egypt, the five-time Afcon champion.
The Israeli coach, Avram Grant, who led the Chipolopolo boys to their first Afcon after missing on three occasions, suffered his first defeat, even if it wasn’t a competitive game.
In a fairly contested game, the Pharaohs of Egypt won thanks to a goal by Hamdi Fathi in the 94th minute, denying Southern Africa nation, its first triumph against Egypt since 1996.
And Leicester City striker, Patson Daka has described last night’s defeat against Egypt as tough and blamed the defeat to lack concentration in the dying minutes.
Despite the loss, Daka, who replaced Evans Kangwa in the 80th minute, said that the team gave a wonderful performance.
“It’s a tough defeat to be honest. I think we tried our best to stay in the game,” he said. “It was just unfortunate that we lost it towards the end. We just have to pick ourselves up from this.”
“We just needed more concentration to finish the game to avoid conceding the goal,” he stated.
The Chipolopolo boys forward also pointed to the lack of scoring opportunities during both halves of the match.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t have so many opportunities, but we had some which we didn’t utilize,” he said.
Daka thinks last night’s game was a learning curve with the attention now going to the second friendly game against Uganda on Tuesday next week.
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“We just have to build on that [the defeat], learn from that and ensure when we go in the second game we are prepared for the bigger challenge,” he charged.
