The Malawi National Team is expected to leave Malawi for Botswana for a scheduled World Cup Qualifier match against Namibia. The game will be played on Friday, September 6, 2025, at the Francistown Stadium.
The Flames are already out of the race to the World Cup finals in 2026, but these games present a perfect opportunity for Kalisto Pasuwa to start building a team which he will use for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. They are 10 points behind the leaders, Tunisia, who have collected 16 points and remain unbeaten in the group stages of the qualifiers.
Namibia won the previous encounter at Bingu Stadium in Malawi, and Kalisto Pasuwa will be looking for revenge while trying to build something positive. Namibia are second in the 6-team group table with 12 points from 6 games, while Liberia are third with 10 points and Equatorial Guinea fourth with 7 points.
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On Tuesday, Kalisto Pasuwa sat down with the media to preview the game, discussing the team’s preparations, how new players have settled in, and what he expects from the match.
Pasuwa called up 26 players, including 16 foreign-based and 10 local-based players, who began preparations on Friday for the fixtures against Namibia in Francistown, Botswana, on Friday, September 5, and Liberia at home on Monday, September 8.
On How Preparations Have Been Going
“Yeah, we started [training] on Friday and we had 16 players in camp, mostly local players. Then we also had Mayele [Malango] who came in on Saturday, so in total we had 17 guys in camp.
“The intensity was there since you know that the league is on [in Malawi] and the fitness is good. We only had Lanjesi Nkhoma and Patrick Mwaungulu, who you know were in the off-season, but they did well and fared well. With the addition of the other guys who came on Monday, our training session on Tuesday was well executed in terms of the tactical approach.”
On How New Players Are Adapting
“So far so good. The new players that we have just called up are doing well. You can see the difference in terms of how they are training and also their approach to the game, which is one thing we are looking at. We need these professional players to add the power that we are lacking in the team.
“I sat down with the senior players, I sat down with the captain, and I told them that it’s not all about the coach—it starts from them as well. These are experienced players who have been playing football at a high level. In football, it is all about communication and doing things together. You can see, even when we were training, that the competition was there, which is one thing we want in our team.”
On Having Team Selection Headaches
“Yeah, tough times can be there in terms of team selection, but remember, we have got a team which we were using, so we can’t just dismantle the whole team. We will add one or two players to the team which we had and then move on.”
What He Expects from the Game
“Remember, we have been talking about building a new team, so when building a team, sometimes you need results. Getting results will require us to acknowledge that we are out of the World Cup, but we need results to encourage the players that are coming into the team.”
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