Malawi Women’s National Football Team, the Scorchers, have under head coach Lovemore Fazili won only five out of 15 matches between January 2025 and April 2026.
The record follows the team’s recent failure to secure a win at the Fifa Women’s Series held in Nairobi, Kenya, where Malawi suffered a 5-0 defeat to Australia and a 3-2 loss to India, finishing bottom of the four-nation tournament.
In the period under review, the Scorchers registered five wins, two draws and eight losses.
This translates to a win rate of 33.3 percent, a draw rate of 13.3 percent and a loss rate of 53.3 percent.
Offensively, they scored 28 goals in 15 matches at an average of nearly two goals per game.
However, defensively the team conceded 32 goals, resulting in a negative goal difference of four.
Out of the 60 total goals recorded in these matches, the Scorchers scored 46.7 percent while conceding 53.3 percent.
Notable victories include back-to-back 3-0 wins over Lesotho in Blantyre and another emphatic 8-1 triumph during the delayed 2025 Cosafa Women’s Championship in South Africa.
The team’s biggest achievement during this period was qualification for the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) as Malawi secured their place after holding Angola to a goalless draw in Luanda before sealing qualification with a 2-0 victory at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe.
Despite these positives, the Scorchers struggled against stronger opposition, suffering defeats to Morocco and Ghana as well as losses to fellow Cosafa bloc teams such as South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In an interview after the Fifa Series third place play-off, Fazili said the tournament provided valuable lessons ahead of Wafcon.
“These are good preparations towards Wafcon because, as I have said, we have learned a lesson,” he said.
However, the coach also expressed concerns over the commitment levels of some professional players while praising the efforts of locally based talent.
“We have local players maybe doing much better and some professionals not putting in 100 percent performance,” said Fazili
He indicated that future squad selections would be based on performance rather than reputation.
“We are only going to take players who can deliver when we assemble the team going to Wafcon. We are going to take serious players not because of the names,” he said.
But football analyst George Chiusiwa observed that the Scorchers are still under building process.
He said: “The Scorchers are still under rebuilding and we should not expect much from the girls as there are still a lot of things to correct technically and tactically. To be fair, gauging by the numbers, we may look at the performance of the coach as not fully satisfactory.”
On some professional players lacking commitment, Chiusiwa noted that the Scorchers rely too much on individuals.
He said: “It is also important to note that this is a side that is built around particular individual players and not as a collective. It is thus inevitable for the coach to be blaming some professional players over lacking commitment.”
But Chiusiwa warned the coach against castigating the players in public.
He said: “The coach ought to realise that the relative success of this team hinged on the same players he is pointing fingers at. Overly blaming the players is somehow retrogressive, catastrophic and calamitous as this has serious effects on team morale, harmony and bonding.
“The reality is that the team is fundamentally built around the quality of particular players whose availability at the Wafcon is very significant. What is needed is for the gaffer to learn to properly manage his players beyond the public eye.
“Criticising or reprimanding players in the public domain over their conduct and performance defines one of the coaches’ weaknesses in player management”
Football Association of Malawi operations director Gomezgani Zakazaka said the association will wait for a comprehensive report from the technical panel before making further comments on the team’s performance.
He, however, noted that the Fifa Women’s Series provided an important platform for the team’s preparations for Wafcon.
He said: “We believe this was a very good platform for the development of the girls and the team in general to face opponents from outside Africa for the first time.
“They are highly ranked teams, with Australia at 15 and India at 69. This provided a litmus test for our girls in playing at a high level.”
