Fuelled by support, Zimbabwe aim to prove doubters wrong at AFCON

Drawn in Group B alongside Egypt, South Africa and Angola, Zimbabwe head into the tournament widely viewed as underdogs. 

However, Marinica believes the surge of support following the Warriors’ return to continental competition will serve as a powerful motivator.

"So many people, so many fans that support us. Thank you very much to everyone, please stay together and try to avoid the noise and look for the things that we want to do. We want to go there and achieve something that hasn't been achieved before, to qualify,” Marinica said.

“Yes there are challenges, particularly a lot of players that are injured, we also have players that recently haven't been playing that much in their clubs. Unfortunately we had this setback with clubs and FIFA that we had the plan to get together on the 8th.

“Unfortunately that has not happened and now we have all these players and some players particularly from South Africa that are able to come, some from Europe but not many."

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The coach said at a glance, the AFCON schedule looks crammed but it was now too late to moan but rather get on with the work.

"We have about 10 players that we have to meet in Morocco and we are gonna have only one training session. Unfortunately, that's the way it's planned out at the moment because we are travelling today, we are arriving tomorrow and after that the team will have a recovery session,” the coach added.

“After which we will have a proper session allocated on the 19th, on the 20th we are gonna travel again to Agadir. We'll have a recovery session, on the 21st it's match day minus one, so we'll have the 22nd. 

“After that we travel back to Marakech, another travelling, another recovery session then we'll have one training session on the 24th. 

“25th is matchday minus one, 26th is actually the match, 27th is the recovery session. 28th is another matchday minus one, 29th is the game. So, it looks like from 16 to 29 plenty of games but unfortunately only two training sessions allocated but it is what it is. 

“We believe in our course and we believe that we can do what hasn't been achieved before."