Senior national football team coach, Collin Benjamin has expressed happiness with the way young players are stepping up to the table during their training sessions.
The newly appointed Brave Warriors head coach called up a 31-member training squad for the upcoming 2022 Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Cup set for Durban, South Africa in July.
The 31-member training squad began their training at the Namibia Football Association (NFA) Technical Centre on Saturday.
In an interview with Nampa on Monday, Benjamin said the players are giving it their all.
“The young players don’t have the same experience as the seniors, but they have the potential and are committed to training,” he said.
He added that in addition to their hard work and commitment, he hopes they will remain grounded and humble.
“We have good young players and I hope they will keep their heads on their necks and their foot on the ground, because if they grow big heads they will lose focus and their footballing careers will also be affected,” said Benjamin.
The coach stated that he is happy with the way the players are responding to instructions.
“We still have three weeks before we compete at the Cosafa Cup and at the moment we are doing football conditioning and squeezing in preseason training so the players are doing a lot of football playing with high intensity,” he said.
Benjamin also said the Cosafa squad is being given a chance to put their hands up for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifiers.
“What we are looking at is having a very competitive team, as well as having a few players that will put up their heads out to say ‘Coach I am here and ready for the challenge.’ We want to give these guys a chance at this level so when we compete in the Afcon qualifiers, we will have a squad and players that are ready to get points out of Cameroon and Burundi and qualify us for the Afcon finals,” Benjamin said.
He added that they have three weeks before their first game against Madagascar at the Cosafa Cup and their focus at the moment is not on tactics and fitness, as that will be done before the competition.