Malawi lost 3-1 to Burkina Faso in Bamako, Mali in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nation qualifiers. The home team scored two through FC Shakhtar Donetsk striker Lassina Traore and another from Boureima Bande while Malawi scored a consolation goal from Kamuzu Barracks striker Zeliet Nkhoma.

This means Malawi has suffered back to back defeats, last week they lost 3-2 at home against Burundi making them sit bottom in group L without a point. Burkina Faso leads with 4 points followed by Senegal with the same points and Burundi third with 3 points. Coach Patrick Mabedi has since given his verdict if Malawi still has chances to qualify as Wa Ganyu writes. 

On overall performance…

We respected the opponent too much, we couldn’t deal with the long balls behind us, we spoke about it, we analyse them, we knew that they will be playing long balls, but I think our covering was too bad, and we dropped too deep and we let the team to play, the respect was just too much and I think it’s where we invite problems on yourself, second half we started very well after we discussed, we talked that we can take the game to them but I think it was too late. What makes us to be worse is at the back we were not good enough, we didn’t deal with throw balls where they hit us most and we were also tired, very bad results. Disappointing to give away points that way.

On Malawi chances to qualify…

To be honest, we need to face reality, it’s slim because we lost 6 points and we are on zero, other teams are already with 4 points, for us to catch it might be very difficult. It’s unacceptable to concede 6 in two games. In future, we need to have proper preparations that will help us to fix that problem, because if you go to the game without preparing well this is what you face. For example, the team we faced has a lot of professionals and playing outside, for us it’s a problem because our league is not at a high level, we need to prepare for maybe 5 to 6 days. It’s a shame for us to concede 6 goals in two games. [However] we lost to a good side, congratulations to them.

On how best he will do to bring sanity at the back…

Look, I will take you back, we played at COSAFA, and we had time to work with defence and understanding of each other, if you look, one thing you need to understand is defence, and if you change the defence it’s going to be a problem. If you look, the understanding of Nickson [Mwase] and [Lawrence] Chaziya was very bad. It’s important we need a natural left back, but we have had setbacks due to injuries.