Malawi national football team Head Coach, Ronny van Geneugden (RVG), has said the Flames deserved better from their Cosafa Castle Cup Group B match against Botswana which ended 1-1 on Wednesday night at Old Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, South Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, very painful. We were four minutes [away] from a big final against Angola had we beaten Botswana today [Wednesday]. Then I thought we had everything in our own hands to play for victory in the group stage. Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t work out,\u201d RVG said.<\/p>\n
The draw, coupled with Monday\u2019s 1-0 loss to Mauritius, condemned the Flames out of the running for a quarter-final berth, with an academic game against Angola today to wind up the group assignments.<\/p>\n
Bottom-placed Malawi have one point in the group after two matches while leaders Botswana have four points.<\/p>\n
Angola and Mauritius are tied on three points after losing a game each. The Flames are the only team in the group that has not won a match.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the draw, RVG said his charges were just minutes away from sealing a win after going ahead through defender Precious Sambani\u2019s fourth-minute goal. Kabelo Seakanyeng equalised for Botswana in the 86th minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe game started very well for us. I think we played good football. We knew that Botswana had a lot of power-play and strong duels in front with long balls. So it was a tough game for our defenders but I think they did very well and I think we also had some chances to make it two and maybe 3-0. At half-time, we knew that pressure was going to be too high for Botswana.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like to criticise the referee [Celso Vacao] but I think he was supposed to produce a red card [for a foul on Richard Mbulu]. I do not say that this had an influence on the game but he must follow the rules,\u201d the Belgian said.<\/p>\n
It was the Flames\u2019 eighth draw in 14 games under RVG, with the rest being two wins and four defeats.<\/p>\n
Botswana Coach, David Bright, said his second-half tactical switch paid off.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, we expected a very quick game from Malawi because one, they were looking for their first three points, and then we were also looking forward to earning full points to top the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, I think since I came here, this was the toughest game of all the games that I have watched. They gave us a very good game. In the first-half, we were a little bit down as some of our players, especially the right back, lacked confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut after talking to them at half-time, we adjusted. Our strikers were not combining well and that is when we took our right winger to play with a striker who scored. We brought in a defensive midfielder because they were very strong in midfield. But this was a very good game of football. I am happy that we did not lose the game,\u201d Bright said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi national football team Head Coach, Ronny van Geneugden (RVG), has said the Flames deserved better from their Cosafa Castle Cup Group B match against Botswana which ended 1-1 on Wednesday night at Old Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, South Africa. \u201cYeah, very painful. We were four minutes [away] from a big final against Angola […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66141","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\/66141","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=66141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66146,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66141\/revisions\/66146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}