Photo Credit - Football Association of Malawi.
Malawi national team head coach Kalisto Pasuwa believes his players were punished because of their own mistakes following a 1-0 defeat against Namibia in their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying fixture at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe on Thursday.
The Brave Warriors needed a 40th minute goal courtesy of Prins Tjiueza to register their third win of the qualification campaign and remain unbeaten in the six team Group J and keep alive their hopes of qualifying for the global competition in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
“We had a game of chances, but this are international matches where if you do one mistake you are punished, we were giving them too much respect, allowed them to keep possession in most of the areas, but yes defensively we had numbers but again we ended up conceding when we had numbers at the back and we didn’t do much in terms of our attack,” Pasuwa told the media after the game.
“But in second half, the boys increased intensity and it is very unfortunate maybe we had our chances and we could have scored one or two but that is how football is all about. I think we need to do more in terms of attacking going forward.
“We are playing games to win and we can’t say now that everything is gone, and then we say we are just playing for the sake of playing. When we go out there as coaches or even players, we go to look for a win, hence maybe you saw us playing and unfortunately we lost, we got one of the result today, we lost.
“We only trained for the two days (before playing against Namibia) and it needs a lot for one to get combinations right, to come up with a team that we can say is a good team, and it is too early for us to say that they have failed to combine with the local players but I think with days it will come good.”
The win saw Namibia remain second with 11 points from five matches, two less leaders Tunisia, while Liberia are third on seven points, Malawi fourth on six, Equatorial Guinea on three while Sao Tome and Principe are last without a single point.
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