13 Aug 2019

Slovakia women’s national football team head coach, Peter Kopun, said training with Botswana senior women national football team was a good experience.

Kopun trained with Botswana, which was preparing for an Olympic qualifier against Banyana Banyana of South Africa.

The game will be played in Gaborone on August 30.

Kopun said Botswana was made up of young and talented players, who executed instructions without complaining.

“The pool of players should be kept together because they have potential and if given more support in three years, they will be world beaters,” he said.

Kopun further said it was important that players continued training together to improve their tactics, adding that if possible they should even train with their male colleagues to make them stronger.

“Football nowadays is all about passing the ball and make sure that you don’t lose it to your opponents, therefore training with their male colleagues will make them improve immensely,” he said.

Furthermore, he said, he had shared with the team to be always precise when making a decision during the game, given that losing a ball had potential to give their opponents an edge over them “Poor decision making means making mistakes that might cost a team and I am happy that during training they made the right decisions to pass the ball to their teammate without threats,” he said.

According to Kopun, decision making should be taught in training depending on the coach’s philosophy, he therefore suggested to Botswana’s technical team to include it in their training plan.

He said during training, he realised that some players wanted to enjoy the game, adding that this therefore meant that the central defence should be more disciplined, so that should a mistake happen they must be in a position to prevent opposing players.

Botswana coach, Gaolethoo Nkutwisang said she had learnt a lot from her Slovakian counterpart. She said the team enjoyed training and new methods, which she said they would always remember.“We learn every day from different people and I like the way the team responded to the Slovakian’s technical team,” she said. ENDS