Warriors COSAFA Castle Cup squad assistant coach Bongani Mafu is confident that Zimbabwe are capable of beating Lesotho in Wednesday’s semi-final at Moruleng stadium in South Africa.

And there is one obvious way to reinforce that belief, according to the former Highlanders coach.

“We need an early goal if possible considering that we are the team that is coming out from lots of matches, while they are still fresh. So most probably they will look to wait for us to tire, but we believe that if we get our goals, we won’t tire, but instead we will be motivated to keep going,” said Mafu after Tuesday’s training session.

The Warriors resumed training on Tuesday after being given a day’s rest on Monday following a blitz in the group stages where they played four games inside a week. 

Their opponents on Wednesday, Lesotho, have played a single match knocking out 2015 champions Namibia 5-4 on penalties after the two sides were tied 0-0 in regulation time.

Mafu knows Likuena will try to tire them before trying to go for the kill as the game progresses.

However, the Warriors are fully aware of that possible tactical approach by the 2000 Cosafa Cup finalists, hence the push for an early goal and avoid going beyond 90 minutes where they will need a penalty lottery to separate the two.

“It will be nice to wrap up the game in 90 minutes. We, however, got people ready to take up penalties and goalkeepers ready to save if that unwanted scenario happens, but we are not looking forward to penalty shootouts to be honest with you. We want to wrap up our game in regulation time,” said Mafu.

The Warriors have been the most lethal side in the tournament, scoring 12 goals in four matches, while their backline has been penetrated just once, conceding after 318 minutes of football when rare poor marking by the central defence allowed Swaziland’s Felix Badenhorst to level the score line in the 48th minute mark during the quarter-final clash on Sunday night at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace.

Zimbabwe has beaten Lesotho five times in the previous six meetings in the tournament.