Both South Africa and Zambia lost their opening games to Senegal and Tunisia respectively and will hope for maximum points as the battle for COSAFA is rekindled in Senegal.

The loser of this encounter will then play a formality in the last game while the winner will have have interest of what happens in the game between Tunisa Vs Senegal.

Keagan Dolly, the South African u23 midfielder and also vice captain of the squad is upbeat that South African can still qualify if they beat Zambia and Zambia should be aware of the determined South Africa.

“There is nothing we can do about the Senegal match, it is behind us. Our focus now is on the Zambia match and the one after that. We are all aware that the next two games are very important if we want to qualify, so we have to start focusing on what’s good for our team, what our strengths are and play accordingly,” said Dolly.

The Chipolopolo were boosted by the arrival of Lubambo Musonda from Armenia on Monday evening. Lubambo is likely to replace Patrick Ngoma in the starting line up. Ngoma suffered a soft muscle injury on Saturday and has since been ruled out of the match against South Africa.

Ronald Kampamba who scored the goal of the tournament so far  against Tunisia before being substituted with suspected injury has been certified fit to play.

ZAMBIA INTERESTS

Zambia will be hoping they beat South Africa and hope there is a winner between Senegal and Tunisia and more importantly will be hoping the winner in that encounter is Senegal who they play in the last game.

Again we are back in Zambia to calculators and watching what happens in the other game because of lack of concentration by the team in the Tunisia game. We expect minimal changes in the starting line up but most of the people back home will be hoping Taonga Bwembya could be given a run as it was evident in the first game that our defence was really a let down against Tunisia.

This is a litmus test for Fighton Simukonda and Tenant Chilumba and losing to South Africa means losing the job as those are sentiments that are on the street and littered on Social Meida back home.

The game kicks off at 17:00Hrs Zambian Time.