Brave Warriors to lock horns with the Zebras in international friendly tie
The men’s national football team, the Brave Warriors will will take on Botswana in an international friendly match in preparations for the upcoming 2018 African Nations Championship at the Sam Nujoma Stadium on 7 October.
According to the football associations web page, the Brave Warriors will use the upcoming international match to break some sweat as they engage on rival Botswana at the same venue where Botswana knocked them out of 2016 Cosafa Cup, 5-4 on penalties after a one-all draw at a packed stadium.
Ricardo Mannetti, coach of the Brave Warriors said he will use the game to test his charges in preparations for the 2018 CHAN finals, host country still to be decided.
“I’m glad I will have this game to see what I have and I will use about 90% of local-based players and I’m looking at having at least three foreign-based players on Saturday. This kind of games are very helpful as they assist in identifying areas that needs to be worked on and just generally see how far you have come,” he said.
Mannetti will be announcing his team to face Botswana on Tuesday morning at football House and has been training will the local-based players since qualification for CHAN was confirmed.
“The league is yet to start and we have kept the players busy. Some clubs have also started with training and that makes things a bit better but for us international interaction is key because it gives us the real analysis”, Mannetti said.
Namibia will be making her first appearance at the competition having qualified with a 2-1 aggregate win over Comoros in the qualifiers’ final round courtesy of a Muna Katupose brace at the Sam Nujoma on 20 August.
Africa’s football governing body CAF announced that at the end of the deadline for submission of applications on Saturday 30 September at 23:59, three federation’s had submitted their bids to the General Secretariat of the Confederation Africaine de Football for the organization of the 2018 Total African Nations Championship. The Federations are of Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia and Morocco.
The draw procedure for the finals are to be confirmed as 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four teams. The hosts will be seeded in Group A, and the title holders will be seeded in Group C should they qualify. Total CHAN is a competition is made up of players selected in their CAF members’ national championships. The 5th edition is to be held in 2018.
