Coach Avram Grant of the Chipolopolo boys has described Zambia’s Africa Cup of Nations group F as tough, adding that Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Morocco are challenging opponents.

Group F welcomes back Zambia, the 2012 champions, who missed the previous three editions of the competition.

He guided Ghana to the final in the 2015 and 2017 tournaments, as well as to the third and fourth play-offs, respectively.

There is no such thing as an easy draw, according to Grant, who suffered his first loss as the Chipolopolo coach on Friday in a friendly match against Egypt.

“Morocco is the best team in Africa they showed it in the World Cup, and Congo is a very good team and Tanzania have improved a lot. it is tough playing against them,” Grant said. 

Grant has instilled a winning mentality in the Chipolopolo boys, who, for a number of years, were content to be second-best..

Grant promises a good Afcon outing.

Since replacing Aljosa Asanovic, he has recorded three victories and one draw in four competitive matches.

Back-to-back wins over Lesotho before seeing off Ivory Coast in style in a 3 – 0 home win during the AfCON qualifiers. 

In their final qualifying game, Zambia played to a 1 – all draw against Comoros.  Grant wants to take that momentum into the tournament in January. 

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“Our target is that it will be tough to play against us,” he said, “[but] we need good preparation, we need to arrange everything on the pitch and off the pitch it will not, perfect [but] we need to learn from our mistakes on the pitch and off the pitch.”