CAN Morocco 2024 in Futsal/ She finds herself on the way to Morocco in Football as well as in Futsal for qualification for the World Cup: Zambia more ambitious than ever
HIBAPRESS-RABAT-CAF
The kickoff of the Morocco 2024 Africa Cup of Nations Futsal will be given on April 11. Zambia, who missed out on the last edition in 2020, are hoping to make amends and are aiming for one of the FIFA World Cup™ spots reserved for the tournament’s top three finishers.
CAFOnline spoke to Zambia’s head coach, Andrea Cristoforetti, who shared his ambitions for the tournament and explained why a good result in Morocco is important for the development of Futsal in Zambia.
Cafonline: Andrea, Zambia is in Group A with Morocco, host country of the competition, Angola and Ghana. What are your impressions ?
Andrea Cristoforetti: We fell into the most difficult group. As fate would have it, we meet Morocco, the reigning African champion, early in the tournament. The Atlas Lions are one of the best teams in the world. They have played a lot of matches and for us it will be an honor to play against such a team and an experience to boot.
This team is made up of players who play in Europe. They are really active and experienced at the international level. That said, the other two teams will be Angola and Ghana. We don’t know much about Ghana. We just saw the recent match against Ivory Coast, and it looks like the team hasn’t played internationally for a while. Next comes Angola, our great rival, a team who prevented us from qualifying a few years ago. They recently appointed a Portuguese coach who is a friend and has good knowledge of futsal.
We know we need to win two matches to qualify for the next round, but at this stage we are talking about the best teams in Africa and there is no easy group. Our team really has to compete against the best.
*You are returning to this competition after missing the last edition, what are your goals for this year?
-The minimum objective we have set ourselves is to reach the semi-finals. I think that’s the least we can do.
*When do you plan to start your preparation course?
-We started training and focusing on physical preparation. We are working every day to find the best possible conditions in the coming weeks.
*Are friendly meetings planned?
-We received a few invitations. For us it is very important to play. One of the best ways to improve and train is to play real matches. We are trying to see if it is feasible and possible, otherwise we will only do internal matches.
*How important is it to you to achieve good results?
-Historically, we know that when a national team begins to participate in an international competition, it reflects on the country. We have the ambition to qualify for the World Cup. If the minimum objective is to go to the semi-final, our real ambition is to qualify for the World Cup. This is the impact we have. When you see Zambians participating in such competitions and perhaps the World Cup, the movement will ripple through the country. My job has always been clear since day one: to develop futsal in Zambia. Continue this growth and try to achieve success.
