Butler praises new Francistown Stadium pitch
Chakalisa Dube | Thursday September 3, 2015 14:31
The national team held its first ever training session at the new stadium on Tuesday afternoon, in a bid to acclimatise ahead of Saturday’s Africa Nations Cup qualifier against Burkina Faso. The Zebras initial training session was done at the old Francistown Stadium on Tuesday morning.
“Judging from the good attitude of the players in training, I believe they have adjusted well to the pitch conditions.
“The pitch is fantastic which offer players a good opportunity to play their normal game. In fact, I would not mind if the national teams play here more often,” the Briton said.
Butler was also impressed with the players during the two training sessions the team held on Monday.
“All the players have looked sharp during training. Even those who have just come back from injuries have been very good. There is competition among players which means no one is guaranteed a place in the team,” he said.
Butler said that based on the good attitude shown by players in training he is confident the team will pick positive results against the Stallions.
The likes of Hendrick Moyo, Mogakolodi Ngele and Ofentse Nato looked very sharp on Tuesday.
Even Galabgwe Moyana who has not seen much game time in recent months was impressive with deft touches on the ball.
Zebras welfare manager Sakaeyo Jane also had a brief tour of the stadium particularly the dressing room and said they are fine.
The Stallions, who have named a very strong squad which features mostly foreign based players among them, Jonathan Pitriopa, Aristide Bance and Netherlands based midfielder Betrand Traore are expected to arrive in Francistown today.
They will train at the new stadium on Friday at 4pm.
Meanwhile, a system failure, which interrupted ticket sales for the game at Shoprite Computicket has been fixed. Tickets priced at P30 and P50 are now available.
On Monday, the ticketing system was not releasing P30 and P50 tickets. Instead the system only released P100 tickets which raised fears that cheap tickets had run out.