World Cup: Zambia Thrash Uzbekistan in Turkish Invitational Tournament

Zambia women’s national team coach Bruce Mwape is pleased to see his side end their Turkish Women’s Cup outing with an efficient 4-0 win over Uzbekistan on Tuesday.

The win was Zambia’s biggest at the three-nation round-robin tournament Turkiye is hosting from February 13-22.

All four goals came from the Zambia teams’ senior figures and Grace Chanda got the show on the road with an 8th minute goal to see Shepolopolo take a one-nil halftime lead.

Rachael Nachula and her namesake Kundananji added to the score sheet in the 58th and 61st minutes respectively.

Barbara Banda then capped the rout with a captains treat with a sublime free-kick in the 67th minute.

Coach Bruce Mwape said that the result and performance are exactly what his bench has been crying for in Turkiye.

“The result of today’s game was good, this is what we wanted as a technical bench,” Mwape said.

“We wanted to see our players score more goals.”

Zambia started the tournament with a 1-0 win over North Macedonia on February 15 and lost by the same score line to Slovenia on February 18.

“In the last game that we played, we created a few chances but we failed to score goals but this time around we have managed to score at least four goals which is a good thing,” Mwape said.

The Turkiye trip was Zambia’s first engagement in 2023 ahead of their debut appearance at the FIFA Women’s World Cup which will be co-hosted by Australia