"Here, you see talent everywhere"

The former Chelsea, West Ham United, Portsmouth and Ghana manager speaks to World Soccer to discuss his new role in charge of the Zambia national team

- Mark Gleeson

You began life in Zambia with two victories against Lesotho in the AFCON 2023 qualifiers. How pleased were you with that start?

I had watched many of the games that the Zambia national team had played before, so I knew the weaknesses and strengths. But I had a very short time to prepare them. I had monitored players in Europe and in the league here, in which time I saw a lot of games. And then I needed to make the selection. We had some targets about how to improve our game but a very short time to do so. That is actually something that Africa needs to think about. They lose days at the start of the international break while the majority of the players are travelling from Europe, so there is even less time to work with the players. But I think the players picked up the information very well.

Lesotho were very difficult to play against, they had already drawn 0-0 with the Ivory Coast in which they gave them no chances. One of the things that we spoke about was mentality, and I thought we showed a very good mentality because we were 1-0 down in the first game but responded very well and won the game. Of course, there were a lot of things that we can improve on, and we will improve them. The other thing that I was very happy about was how we played in the second half of the second game. The players were supposed to be tired. I said to them: “Tired is not just physical but a mental attitude,” and we were looking really fresh.

Do you think that your next qualifier against Ivory Coast in June is going to teach you a lot more about your team?