Gladiators can win Cosafa – Jacobs

The Brave Gladiators should aim to win the upcoming Cosafa Women’s Championship, their head, Woody Jacobs, says.

His team should also believe they can match, or better, host nation South Africa in Group A – which also has Eswatini and Seychelles – on the way to fulfilling that ambition.

Jacobs’ assertion follows yesterday’s draw for the competition that will be staged in Gqeberha, South Africa, from 22 October to 2 November.

“I think it’s a relatively good draw if you look at the teams in the group. The grudge match, the big one, is South Africa’s Banyana Banyana, a powerhouse in African women’s football,” Jacobs said in an interview with the NFA website.

“We’re looking forward to this and we are preparing in all earnest. I said to the girls that there’s no problem in dreaming, and the dream this year is to go out for Cosafa.”

Banyana Banyana, who are record seven-time winners of the competition, are likely to field an experimental side, as they look to test their depth.

“I think our team has come on in leaps and bounds and this has performed well,” Jacobs noted.

“So, what must stop us to win Cosafa for the first time and emulate the class of 2015 that won Cosafa for the men’s side?

“It’s time that the gladiators also take their rightful place in southern African football and win it, because the last time we played in the final was in 2005,” the optimistic tactician said.

The closest that Namibia have come since then was in 2022, when they reached the semi-finals.

“We just need to win and emerge from the group and that’s what we’re aiming to do. The objective is solely to get the team in the best possible shape, to get the best players to come and represent Namibia,” said Jacobs.

There will be 14 teams competing in this year’s tournament, making it the biggest women’s international competition staged on the African continent.

Defending champions Malawi have been drawn alongside Botswana, Madagascar and Mauritius for this year’s record-breaking.

Malawi will hope to progress from Group B to the semi-finals but face a tough Botswana side who reached the quarter-finals of the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco.

Zambia, winners in 2022, headline the three-team Group C along with Angola and Comoros, while Group D contains Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.

The top teams in each of the pools advance to the semi-finals.

There will be two venues used in Gqeberha, including the iconic Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium that was built ahead of the 2010 Fifa World Cup and remains among the best stadia in Africa.

There is no doubt that this tournament, along with the regular staging of the Cosafa Women’s Under-17 Championship and the zonal qualifiers for the CAF Women’s Champions League, have been a catalyst for the success of national teams from the region.

Players such as Temwa Chawinga, who is excelling in the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States with Kansas City, Barbra Banda and the world’s most expensive women’s footballer, Racheal Kundananji, to go with a host of high-profile South Africans, have cut their teeth at international level in this competition.

South Africa have won seven of the previous 11 Cosafa Women’s Championships played, with Zimbabwe (2011), Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi being the other teams to lift the trophy.