Malawi National Football Team is on the verge of qualifying for the TotalEnergies African Nations Championship as they face Bafana Bafana in the second leg of the last qualifying round at Loftus Stadium in Pretoria, South Africa.
The Flames go into the match with an advantage having won the first leg 1-0 at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe a week ago courtesy of Zeliat Nkhoma last gasp goal.
Malawi now just need a draw to book a place at the final to be held in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania in August.
check by Bafana player. |Courtesy of FAM
Flames coach Kallisto Pasuwa in a pre-match interview said his charges are ready for the showdown, but stressed that despite the 1-0 advantage they need to approach the game with caution.
He said: “Like I said before to say, it’s the first-half that we played. We are going for the second-half, and we’ve been trying to psyche each other, everybody in the house, to say it’s not yet done until it’s done.
“So, we need to be very positive in whatever we do. You saw South Africa is a positioned game team and they need to keep the ball away from opponents a lot and we need also to quickly adjust so that we can try to match them in whatever they do.”
But the Zimbabwean tactician said they will not make a mistake of defending too deep as this might invite pressure on his charges.
“For us, we are not saying we just go there to defend. We need also to be attacking. The best way of defending is to attack. So that’s one way we have been discussing in our training session that we had.”
Pasuwa might have to shuffle around his starting 11 to suit the game plan in South Africa and he has all the TNM Super League top players at his disposal.
He said: “There is now competition to say I need also to be part of it. And it has been easier like this week for us maybe in trying to see who can go and represent us when we are playing away from home.”
But the Flames have to be at their best if they are to make it past Bafana who have beefed up their squad with six players.
On Thursday, Bafana Bafana coach Molefi Ntseki welcomed top players such as Mamelodi Sundowns star Neo Maema, Ndumulelo Maphangule, Victor Letsoalo, Siyanda Msani, Simon Ramabu and Kamogelo Sebelebele.
The players were unavailable for the first leg as they were in action for their respective teams in the Betway Premiership.
Ntseki spoke to www.safa.net that they had rectified the mistakes they made in the first leg.
“I think the first mistake was us playing the game we played in Malawi. The plan was to get a goal and not to concede. Unfortunately, we struggled with the game management,” he said.
“Obviously, when you have players that are not playing regularly in their teams and some of them without teams, we ended up conceding that odd goal in the last three minutes of the game.
“But that did not make us feel bad about the team. We came out of that game with the best lessons that we needed to take into the next game.
“And coming back to South Africa, we made requests to the clubs to release players, especially clubs that are not playing this weekend.”
Malawi has never qualified for the Chan tournament which was introduced in 2007 to promote local players.
In the last edition, Malawi failed to make it to the tournament’s finals after Mozambique booted them out in the second-round.
The Flames were handed a lifeline to the second-round following their first-round opponents Zimbabwe’s Warriors suspension from international football by Fifa.
In the second-round, Malawi were held 1-1 by Mozambique at Bingu National Stadium in July and the return leg at Zimpeto Stadium ended goalless in favour of the young Mambas.
The Flames, once again, find themselves in a similar situation.
