It wasn’t easy for Twiga Stars to qualify for Wafcon finals: coach

Dar es Salaam.Tanzania national women’s football team (Twiga Stars) head coach Bakari Shime has said it was not easy for the team to qualify for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) finals scheduled to take place next year in Morocco.

Twiga Stars qualified on 3-2 aggregate score against Togo in the return leg held on Tuesday night in Lome, Togo. The Tanzanian queens won 3-0 at the Azam Complex in the first leg before losing 2-0 in the return leg.

The team join other 11 nations namely South Africa, Algeria, Ghana, Botswana, DR Congo, Tunisia, Senegal, Zambia, Mali, Nigeria and the hosts Morocco.

In the return leg, Shime said they faced a strong opposition from their rivals, but added that they played with strategies against the Togolese.

“We played against a strong team, that believed they would score more than three goals to eliminate us from the competition.

“I had a different match plan, I fielded players with defensive skills as our prime goal was to stop them from scoring in early minutes, we succeeded in that and went to the breather in a barren draw despite missing a penalty in the 43rd minute,” said Shime.

Despite defending, he said they (Twiga) missed various scoring chances in the encounter.

“Basically, we played well and created various scoring chances, but we failed to convert them into goals. My players deserve big compliments for qualifying for the finals. They fought hard for their nation,” he said.

For her part, the team’s captain, Oppah Clement, said they faced a tough challenge in the encounter, but they followed all the instructions from their technical bench to contain their opponents.

“We were told not to allow them to score in the early minutes of the game. We did that as our spirit was high, targeting to achieve our goal of qualifying for the Wafcon finals and we did it,” said Clement.