TP Mazembe Women head coach Lamia Boumehdi says their top priority is to qualify for the 2026 FIFA Women’s Club World Cup.
Boumehdi, who led TP Mazembe to the Women’s CAF Champions League last season, says it is their aim to defend the title this season. The Moroccan manager won the 2024 CAF Women’s Coach of the Year Award after becoming the first-ever female coach to win the CAF Women’s Champions League.
World football governing body FIFA launched the new 16-team club tournament in 2024 with the first edition set to take place in January and February 2026, with specific details regarding the tournament's structure and qualification for participating teams to be confirmed in the future.
Boumehdi said: “Our goal this year is to continue the work and keep the cup at home and qualify for the Club World Cup in 2026,” said Boumehdi.
“I was very happy to win the Champions League with TP Mazembe after just one year and a half of work, and I also won the trophy for the Best Coach in Africa 2024. I’m really happy because I represent all African women coaches, especially because until now only Desiree Ellis, we are the only women who have won the trophy for the best coach in Africa. It shows that African women coaches are good if we trust them and give them all the means to work.”
The 41-year-old, who started playing for the Morocco senior women’s national team at the tender age of 16, shared a bit of her own background and experience in football.
“I was born in Berrechid, a small city near Casablanca, and I was born gifted in football, and I played football in the streets with the boys because at that time there was no women's football team in my city,” she noted.
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It was my mother who created the first women's team in this city so that I could play football, but I never thought about [turning professional] because in our time football was just a hobby. I never thought that one-day women's football would develop like it has today, that it would become a profession.”
Boumehdi has previously coached Wydad AC women’s team as well as the Morocco U17 and U20 national women’s teams.
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