Zambia’s journey at the 2025 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup came to an end on Wednesday after suffering a 6-0 loss to tournament favorites Canada in the Round of 16.
Despite the defeat, the team’s head coach, Carol Kanyemba, believes this year’s performance was significantly better than in previous editions of the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. Last year, the team lost all three of their group games, but this time they managed to record one victory.
Zambia’s only win at the competition came in their final Group F match, where they defeated New Zealand 4-0 to secure a historic place in the knockout stage for the first time.
“A lot of lessons learnt on how you approach the [knockout stage] matches. I think that our girls have become relaxed. We tried as much as possible to mentally psych them, to come in with their attitude of fighting. But from the way that we started, they were a bit too relaxed. And looking at Canada, they were coming in on us with full force, and we failed to pick up momentum,” Kanyemba bemoaned.
She continued: “I think some of the mistakes or the decisions that the referees were making really disturbed the tempo of the game. But overall, our lesson is: the attitude that we need to come in with when we are going to the round of 16, it’s not like a group stage or game where you can recover. It’s a knockout stage. You lose, you snooze. So I think we really need to work on the mental aspect of the players in that line.”
Kanyemba picked positives from the tournament, stating: “I think this year’s performance has been far better compared to last year. We had our organization, especially in defense; we did quite well looking at the game against New Zealand.”
“Our strikers as well did quite well because everyone was expecting that the team would be running around Mercy Chipasula, but this tournament has revealed other players to come on board and show that they can also come to the party. And I would say we are far better in this tournament. I’ve grown as a coach, and some of the girls who were here last year have also grown and have seen the tempo of games as you progress. Not every team that was last year here is performing the same. So every year, you need to come up with a different attitude and mentality to do better than the previous year.”
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