Ahead of the fourth round fixture, Frenchman Da Rosa has confirmed he will rest a large number of players who did duty against the African champions and give the chance to other players in the squad to show what they are made of.
“Tomorrow [Friday] we will give a chance to other players in the squad to show their fans they are also in good form and can do the job like the rest of the squad,” Da Rosa told the club’s social media pages on Thursday.
“We want to give a break to the regular starters, they have done a fantastic job [beating Al Ahly] and must also get some day off to freshen up, they need a rest and I will have to rotate my squad.”
“We are ready to fight and get good results,” Vandenbroeck said as quoted by the team’s social media pages. “The players are happy to be here and we believe the fans are with us.
“We believe every fan at home will support us and we’ll put in the good work and all the efforts from our past training sessions here in Harare and come home with good results.”
His sentiments have been echoed by defender Erasto Nyoni, who said they will come home victorious if they play according to the coach’s plans.
“We have to treat the game with a lot of caution because we respect our opponents very much,” Nyoni told the club’s social media pages. “They are a good team, they qualified to this stage after winning home and away and that shows you they are not an easy team.
“We have a few hours before the game, but it comes with bad news because we ve tried everything to get Aishi [Manula] and John [Bocco] ready for the game but it’s going to be hard to be ready,” Vandenbroeck told the club’s social media pages.
“[Bocco] is still in bed he s not feeling okay, [Manula] was hurt during our last league game against KMC FC and will take a week or more to be okay. So far there is 50 percent possibility of being in the game.”
Simba travelled to Zimbabwe with a contingent of 24 players and Vandenbroeck is confident he will get replacements for the players during the first leg of their second preliminary round fixture.