Portugal-based striker, Abel Mwakilama, was expected to join Malawi under-20 national football team yesterday, ahead of Saturday\u2019s 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Youth Championship qualifier against Swaziland at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n
The Junior Flames\u2019 Team Manager, Aubrey Nankhuni, said Mwakilama, who has been in spectacular form at Portugal\u2019s fourth-tier regional league side, Sporting de Esmoriz, was expected to join the team in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a great player and his arrival will boast the team\u2019s morale. He will join the team in Lilongwe since we will leave for the capital on Wednesday (yesterday),\u201d Nankhuni said.<\/p>\n
The former Chitipa United forward is expected to partner Peter Banda upfront in the first-leg of the preliminary round, which will be followed by the reverse fixture after a fortnight.<\/p>\n
The Junior Flames\u2019 Coach, Meke Mwase, who had a coaching stint with Swaziland side Mbabane Highlanders in 2016, said he anticipates a tough match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want them [the players] to enjoy the match and win the game. It would be an opportunity for us to get the positive result so that we should have a simple job in the second-leg.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the type of football that is played in Swaziland, but it has been two years since I left; hence, a lot of things might have changed,\u201d Mwase said.<\/p>\n
The winner between Malawi and Swaziland will face Angola in the second-round of the qualifiers.<\/p>\n
The Junior Flames and Swaziland last met at the Cosafa Championship where Malawi won 3-2 at Arthur Davis Stadium in Zambia.<\/p>\n
The Junior Flames last qualified for the continental finals in 1999 in Ghana when Manfred Horner was Technical Director and Alex Masanjala was the coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portugal-based striker, Abel Mwakilama, was expected to join Malawi under-20 national football team yesterday, ahead of Saturday\u2019s 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Youth Championship qualifier against Swaziland at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe. The Junior Flames\u2019 Team Manager, Aubrey Nankhuni, said Mwakilama, who has been in spectacular form at Portugal\u2019s fourth-tier regional league side, Sporting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63072,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63070\/revisions\/63072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}