Cosafa draw today
Malawi national football team will today be among 14 teams that go into the pot for the 2016 Confederation of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Senior Challenge Cup draw.
The draw will take place in Windhoek, Namibia, the host of the tournament set for June 11-25.
Seven lowly-ranked teams in Cosafa region based on April Fifa ranking as well as invitees Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), will be pooled in two groups. The group winners then join six seeded teams that will join the competition in the quarter-finals.
Angola, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Madagascar, Lesotho, Mauritius and Seychelles are the bottom ranked sides while Malawi South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and hosts Namibia are top ranked teams, according to April 7 rankings.
Football Association of Malawi (FAM) general secretary Suzgo Nyirenda said they were waiting for communication from Cosafa on the draw.
“Since we have not sent a representatives, we will just keep fingers crossed and wait to find out who we are playing,” he said.
Malawi has never won the Cosafa Cup. Zambia and Zimbabwe have each won the regional cup four times since the competition was first played in 1997.
South Africa and Angola have three titles each, while Namibia claimed their first championship win when they defeated Mozambique 2-0 in the final in 2015.
Malawi won the Plate Category of the 2015 edition after defeating Zambia 1-0 in the final.
Coach Ernest Mtawali has been give the target of winning the Cosafa Cup and the remaining 2017 Afcon qualifiers against Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
The target was set when technical sub-committee appeared before the executive committee two weeks ago.
Reacting to the target Mtawali said: “It is realistic because we need to win both matches and also do well in the Cosafa Cup in order to prove our worth and we can do it.”
The 2016 Cosafa Cup will be the 16th edition. Originally, the tournament was to be held in May, however, it was rescheduled to avoid a clash with the South African Premier Soccer League. n
