With the bulk of the foreign-based players only expected to start arriving in the country on 26 December which will be the same day the Warriors will be playing Ivory Coast, coach Callisto Pasuwa has been left with no choice but to use players who are not in his provisional squad for the African Cup of Nations campaign in Gabon next month.
Pasuwa said the game had long been confirmed before they had discovered that they would face challenges with an early release of regular players.
This fixture was arranged well before we knew we will not get all our players before 24th of December, to only later find out. But we had no choice but to fulfill the fixture. But I wouldn’t say it’s a matter of wasting time (which we should have been preparing in camp) because as you can see, l have taken the local boys and we also need to see how they perform away from home character wise. We also have one foreign player, Tino Kadewere in the squad
Warriors’ manager Sharif Mussa said the foreign legion is now expected to go into camp on December 26 evening and start training the following day.
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