Malawi\u2019s Flames will open the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Castle Cup preliminary round campaign with a match against Mauritius on May 28, organisers have announced.<\/p>\n
Cosafa\u2019s secretariat released the fixture on Wednesday evening, hours after conducting the draw for the regional football showpiece which is scheduled to kick off on May 27 in Polokwane City, Limpopo Province, South Africa.<\/p>\n
The Flames, who bowed out of last year\u2019s competition without scoring in three games, take on Botswana on May 30 before winding up Group B qualifiers with a match against three-time champions Angola on June 1.<\/p>\n
Both games will be played at Seshego Stadium whereas the Mauritius match is scheduled for Old Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, which means place of safety in South Africa\u2019s vernacular.<\/p>\n
Overall winner of the group will date Zimbabwe in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Botswana warmed up for the contest against Malawi by beating Zimbabwe\u2019s Warriors 1-0 in a friendly played in Harare on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kobamelo Kabaikanye\u2019s 21st minute strike spoiled the hosts\u2019 party in the match that was part of the inaugural Zimbabwe President Independence Cup at the National Sports Stadium.<\/p>\n
In a post-match interview with Zimbabwe\u2019s Herald <\/em>newspaper, Botswana Coach, David Bright, said he used the match to prepare for the Cosafa tournament.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a new team which we are trying to assemble for Cosafa. So I am happy with the win and the way we managed the game after scoring. I think it was fantastic.<\/p>\n \u201cThese guys had strong character. They can fight, they played according to our instructions because we just told them that once we get a goal we will definitely not allow them to score,\u201d www. herald.co.zw <\/em>quoted Bright as saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Malawi\u2019s Flames will open the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Castle Cup preliminary round campaign with a match against Mauritius on May 28, organisers have announced. Cosafa\u2019s secretariat released the fixture on Wednesday evening, hours after conducting the draw for the regional football showpiece which is scheduled to kick off on May 27 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":62961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64189","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\/64189","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=64189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64193,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64189\/revisions\/64193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}