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The skillful player reveals to Goal they were pained to exit the Olympic qualifies and it pushed them to beat the Kilimanjaro Queens
Harambee Starlets striker Mwanalima Adam has revealed the pain of losing to Zambia in the Olympic qualifiers pushed them to win the 2019 Cecafa Women’s Senior Challenge Cup trophy.
The Kenyan team defied all the odds and beat Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro Queens 2-0 to lift the regional trophy in the final played at Chamazi Stadium in Dar es Salaam on Monday.
Prior to heading to Tanzania for the Cecafa tournament, Kenya had suffered a painful exit from the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Qualifiers after they lost to Zambia 1-0 away after a 2-2 draw at home.
Adam now says the exit from the qualifiers, where they were one match away from qualifying for the Games, gave them the added power to punish teams in Tanzania.
“It was painful to lose to Zambia and we asked ourselves, what else can we do to redeem our image and that of Kenyans,” Adam told Goal when the team landed from Dar es Salaam.
“It is the reason we decided we must bring the Cecafa trophy home, it was time for us to also win the trophy and that was the mood in camp since we played our first match in the tournament.
“Any time we won a match, we kept counting and knowing the trophy was coming home. We knew and gave ourselves a target of reaching the final, then after that everything will take care of itself.
“We had beaten Ghana in the Tokyo qualifiers and it could have been very sad for us to lose against teams like Ethiopia and Tanzania at Cecafa.”
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Asked to explain the final against Tanzania, Adam said: “Tanzania pushed us very hard in the first half and their intention was to make us tired so they can take the advantage in the second period.
“However, we knew their plans very well and also decided to increase our tempo in the second half, so we caught them off guard. And the moment we scored the opener and added the second goal, it was hard for them to come back, we knew we had completed the job and the trophy was finally coming home.”
The Starlets, under coach David Ouma, completed the tournament with an unbeaten record and managed to score 24 goals without conceding.
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