Morocco’s U-17 Women’s National Team coach, Younes Rabie, is confident his team can recover from their 3-1 loss to Zambia on Saturday in the 2024 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup qualifiers.
Zambia’s Copper Princesses ran riot at the National Heroes Stadium in Lusaka, with Namute Chileshe scoring a hat-trick. Azraf Kautar netted the consolation goal for Morocco.
A draw next Saturday in the second leg to be played in Morocco at the Stade Municipal de Berkane will be enough for coach Carol Kanyemba’s girls to qualify for the competition, which will be held in the Dominican Republic in October.
However, speaking after the game, Morocco’s coach, Rabie, partly attributed his team’s loss to the poor pitch at the Heroes Stadium. He remained optimistic that they would overcome the deficit.
“One half is over now; we still have 90 minutes to play back home with better conditions,” he said. ” We knew the quality of the pitch wasn’t top…. So we will go back home, as I said; the war is not over yet.”
Rabie said the grass at the stadium was not the best for his team to show their quality.
“The grass is not top. We wanted to play football on the floor and show our quality but the grass wasn’t the best but it’s not the worst.”
He also said the Copper Princesses were physically strong and his players struggled to challenge them.
“Your team is really strong physically and we suffered on that side of the game. It was a more physical side we faced today.”
