Alex Ndhlovu
Zimbabwe Warriors will on Friday play Malawi’s Flames in their second Group B match at Afcon.
Warriors played their first match against Senegal last Monday and were beaten by an unfortunate goal, while Malawi lost to Guinea by the same margin.
Senegal and Guinea have 3 points each, while Zimbabwe and Malawi have zero points.
The two SADC nations have met 10 times since 2005 in all competitions.
The Zimbabwe Warriors have won four times, with Malawi winning twice and they drew four times.
Zimbabwe has a higher chance of winning the game on Friday, if history is anything to go by.
On current FIFA world rankings Warriors are ranked 121 and 31 on CAF rankings, Malawi are on 129 and 35 respectively.
Zimbabwe qualified for the AFCON for a record of five times (2004, 2006, 2017, 2019 and 2021), while Malawi have qualified three times (1984, 2010 and 2021).
Both nations have failed to go beyond the group’s stages in all their campaigns.
Malawi reportedly drafted Zimbabwe born coach Callisto Pasuwa in their technical team.
He is expected for him to give football intelligence about Zimbabwe.
Pasuwa and current Warriors coach Norman Mapeza knows each other for quite a long time since the time they played together for the national team in the 90s.
They both became football coaches in Zimbabwe, before Pasuwa migrated to Malawi.
Pasuwa once coached the national team coach that beat Malawi in Lilongwe, in one of the most remembered episodes in local football history.
A picture of then Warriors coach with a blanket on his back went entering a Malawi bound mumorurama bus went viral on social media.
The Warriors went on to win the match by 2-1. Khama Billiart and Cuthbert Malajila scored for the warriors.
Meanwhile the Football Association of Malawi has now summoned five players that were on the reserve list to join the team in Cameroon.
The players are expected to arrive in Cameroon on Tuesday.
The reinforcements come after CAF clarified on Sunday that participating teams will be allowed to use 28 players for matches at the tournament.
The official number of players registered for the competition is 23, but CAF allowed participating teams to register five more players at their own cost.
Malawi played their first group game against Guinea on Monday without coach Mario Marinica and six players who all tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday, according to the country’s football association.
Warriors have a clean health bill and will hope to douse the Flames on Friday.
Recent Comments