Mission impossible: Flames out of Cosafa

…270 minutes no goal

Flames of Malawi are out of this year’s Cosafa Castle Cup underway in South Africa following another goalless draw to a very youthful Angolan side on Thursday evening at Royal Bafokeng Stadium.

Head coach Ronny Van Geneudgen made three changes to the squad that drew 0-0 against Mauritius on Tuesday, with Peter Cholopi coming in for the suspended John Lanjesi while Francis Mulimbika replaced the injured Ian Chinyama at the left back and Yamikani Chester came in for the injured Micium Mhone.

Malawi needed to score atleast two goals and at the same time hoping to see Mauritius beating Tanzania in the other final group A encounter.
However, it was Angola who played with intent as they controlled ball possession throughout the match.

The partnership of Jabulani Linje and Innocent Bokosi paid no dividends upfront as the pair only had less than two shots at goal.

Malawi’s realistic chance fell through to Chester whose thunderbolt was saved by Angola’s shot stopper for a corner.

From there, it was the visitors who dominated possession with brilliant exchange of passes no wonder Malawi’s goalkeeper Ernest Kakhobwe was called into action more often than his counterpart.

Come second half, Flames’ performance deteriorated as they lacked pace in the midfield where Levison Maganizo and Chikoti Chirwa were operating.

Angola continued their brilliant display of football and were very unfortunate not to open the scoreline when Cholopi’ back pass caught his own goalkeeper napping in the line of defence.

At the other end, Bokosi’ shot was well saved by the visitor’s goalie but nobody was there to finish off the job.

Khuda Muyaba was then brought in for Linje but had no impact as the visitors held on to frustrate the visitors who are out of the competition at an earliest stage for the second year in succession.

The biggest concern was the team’ failure to score not even an offside goal in their last three matches of the tournament.

Kakhobwe was named man of the match.