Warriors team manager Wellington Mpandare was pleased with the performance of his players despite their 1-0 friendly defeat to Lesotho on Wednesday.

The Warriors played without a few of their key players as interim coach Wilson Mutekede gave the chance to the British based players.

Captain Knowledge Musona and Khama Billiat were the biggest absentees due to injury.

Team Manager Mpandare says in spite of the absence of the top players, his side that featured the likes of Tendai Darikwa, Kundai Benyu, Macauley Bonne and Admiral Muskwe who came from the bench all did well in the match.

“The new boys, given this was their first game for the team at this level because Bonne had only played one game for the Young Warriors in that friendly in Morocco where he scored, showed a lot of promise and they could be very good additions for the main team,’’ team manager Wellington Mpandare told The Herald last night.

“Most of the focus was on what these new players could add to the team and the coaches were convinced that they can bring in something different going forward. Darikwa is very devastated, as I am speaking to you, he is very hurt by the defeat because he considers himself a winner and has been saying he wants to make up for all this by winning the game in Namibia on Saturday.

“For players who are not used to playing competitive matches on artificial surfaces, these boys put in a good shift and that’s the progress we are looking for even though we all would have loved to win the game and the nature of the loss, the last-minute goal, was disappointing.’’ he added.

Zimbabwe dominated play throughout the match before a goal four minutes into time added on sealed the doom of the Warriors.