Morena Cuthbert, the head coach of the Botswana Men’s National team, has commended his players for doing well even if they did not advance to the 2025 Cosafa Cup tournament semifinals.

The last Group D match between Zambia and Botswana ended in a 3-3 draw on Wednesday night.

For Botswana to have a chance of making it to the tournament’s knockout stages, they desperately needed to win.

If the Zebras had won, they would have dethroned Comoros, and won the group, to advance to the competition’s semifinals.

Cuthbert, however, stated in a post-match interview that his team fought hard even if they lost from set pieces.

“We conceded the three goals I think I can say from set pieces because they scored two goals from penalties and got one goal from a corner kick, ” he said. 

Comoros Won The Group To Reach Semis.

“Unfortunately after leading the match going to half time with 2-1, during half time we were talking about how we were going to manage the second phase of the match, the unfortunate part is they scored in a very crucial stage of the match which was the first 15 minutes and during that period it’s when we were saying we should just try to balance and they got a penalty towards the end of the last quarter after we had just made two substitutions to try and stabilize and maybe defend the lead,”added the coach. 

“I think the boys gave their whole just unfortunate we will be sitting here saying we would have done this, we need to accept that it was not meant to be,”concluded the coach. 

Comoros won the group with four points, Botswana came in second with two, and Zambia came in last with one. The Zebras wanted to win the Cosafa Cup for the first time.

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