Cameroon inspired by Zambia

Ashu

Cameroon U20 head coach Cyprian Besong Ashu has revealed that his side was motivated to win Thursday’s Group B tie after the hosts’ 6-1 win over Mali a day earlier at the ongoing Afcon U20 in Zambia.Ashu’s side was whitewashed by South Africa 3-1 in their opener and needed to win their second match to have a mathematical chance of progressing to the semifinals and consequently for a place at the Fifa U20 World Cup in Korea from May 20 – June 11.

Speaking after their convincing 4-1 win over Sudan, Ashu said, “We watched the other games especially the one yesterday and it inspired us but ourselves we wanted to do better.”

“We went back and watched our last game where we did basic errors so we wanted to do better. The players themselves knew that it was a must-win game and we were up for it.”

“We know we are a good team. We did not play badly against South Africa but we made basic mistakes, so in today’s game we tried to avoid them.”

He further added that against South Africa, his team did well but in football people concentrate on the result.

“With young players, we should try to see the individual performance of the players and we shall say that we played well. People always focus more on the result. We played in a similar way against Sudan but people will see it more clearly today because we won.”

Cameroon now has three points tied with both South Africa and Senegal while Sudan have only one point after two games.

Semifinal qualification from Group B will have to go down to Sunday when South Africa face Sudan and Senegal take on Cameroon in a must-win game for both teams.

The top two teams from Group B will qualify for the Korea showpiece to join hosts Zambia who booked their ticket on Wednesday.