The Black Queens suffered a rare 0-1 defeat to the Copper Queens of Zambia in the first leg of the third round of the qualifier at the Accra Sports Stadium last Friday, making the return fixture even more difficult.

The Ghanaians were a pale shadow of themselves in the opening 25 minutes of the game as the Zambians dictated the pace and got a goal through forward, Rachael Kundananji, in the 18th minute.

Confidence

Despite the setback, Coach Hauptle remains positive there is still hope for her team to progress to the final round of the qualifiers.

“Normally we should have won that game 4-1 or 3-1. For me it’s good to build on this performance. The players showed a lot of our values. There was a passion to win this game and a passion to play football and one single error is still a high level and we lost this game,” she said during the post-match presser.

“It’s a good base for the next game. I am so convinced that when we put one goal in Zambia, we will explode and we go to the next round,” she added.

Despite the 0-1 loss last Friday, the Swiss coach was full of praise for the team for their longest possession and display of passion to win.

“They did pretty well starting the game. Ghana had good possession today. Ghana played good football today. The Queens were showing that they are able to play amazing football.” 

“In the first half we missed a little bit of deep playing. We didn’t create so many chances out of our possession I think it was about 70-80 possession for Ghana and Zambia was just counter attacking which was something we expected,” she added.

Last Saturday, the Black Queens touched down in Zambia and immediately began preparation for the return encounter at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium.

A victory over the Zambians will see Ghana move to the final round where they will face off in a two-leg encounter with the winner of the clash between the North African rivals, Morocco and Tunisia.