It is a fact that Malawi under-20 national football team\u2019s recent 4-1 triumph over Angola in the Africa Cup of Nations\u2019 (Afcon) Youth Championship has caused a buzz of excitement among Malawians.<\/p>\n
The win came as a miracle, considering that the team was not given a chance to qualify for the third and final round after succumbing to a 1-2 loss to Angola at home. To win 4-1 in an away fixture in Luanda was, indeed, no mean achievement.<\/p>\n
The junior Flames played six games without a win and they were on the verge of being condemned to the gallows of the competition.<\/p>\n
But for some of us who have been around in this profession for almost a quarter of a century, we have learnt to celebrate such wins cautiously.<\/p>\n
It would be foolhardy for me to blindly jump into this razzmatazz when I know pretty well that Malawian teams are very unpredictable when it comes to such competitions.<\/p>\n
If truth be brutally told, we all know how heart-breaking the senior and junior Flames can be, at times, especially when our hopes are high.<\/p>\n
It is not strange for our junior teams to win away games in a competition of such magnitude.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, Ernest Mtawali assembled a formidable side that had the reputation of winning away games. They even won in hard places to visit such as Kinshasa, beating the Democratic Republic of Congo 2-1.<\/p>\n
When we were all smiles with the achievements of the team, it became frustrating when it failed to qualify for the finals at the last hurdle.<\/p>\n
That is how unpredictable the junior Flames can be at times.<\/p>\n
The only time we qualified for the Afcon youth finals was in 1998, when Peter Mponda captained the team. So, it is pointless to celebrate anything below that achievement.<\/p>\n
This team needs to work hard to break that record.<\/p>\n
Playing at such a big stage would open opportunities for most of our players to secure contracts with overseas clubs.<\/p>\n
But they should be told in no uncertain terms that there is massive weight on their shoulders as they have to shrug off South Africa, a country with one of the finest football academies in Africa, to qualify for the Niger finals.<\/p>\n
This will be a different ball-game altogether. There is need for thorough preparations than spending hours singing hymns of praise for the team.<\/p>\n
So, instead of showering these glamour boys with mere political rhetoric, the powers that be should do a lot to prepare the team for the forthcoming two-legged match.<\/p>\n
Finally, my piece of advice goes to Under-20 Coach, Meke Mwase, and the entire coaching panel, Ronny van Geneugden inclusive, that spending sleepless nights thinking about the negativity portrayed in traditional and social media is a waste of time. You have no control over it. And it won\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n
All what people want are positive results. Prove them wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is a fact that Malawi under-20 national football team\u2019s recent 4-1 triumph over Angola in the Africa Cup of Nations\u2019 (Afcon) Youth Championship has caused a buzz of excitement among Malawians. The win came as a miracle, considering that the team was not given a chance to qualify for the third and final round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65832","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\/65832","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=65832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65835,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65832\/revisions\/65835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}