When Malawi won the Cosafa Women’s Championship trophy for the first time in 2023, defeating the Copper Queens 2-1 at Lucas Moripe Stadium in Pretoria, their head coach, Lovemore Fazili, stated that he knew his team would defeat Zambia because they did not play better football than South Africa, whom they had defeated earlier in the tournament.

The Copper Queens only used local players, not stars like Barbra Banda and Racheal Kundananji while Malawi had the majority of their key players excluding Tabitha Chawinga.

Fazili’s controversial statement drew criticism from Zambian fans on social media. He predicted victory over Zambia because the latter was not a strong team in the competition, according to him.

“I was expecting this because, for me, the team to beat was South Africa; they play much better than this one [Zambia],” said Fazili shortly after the match at the Lucas Moripe Stadium.

Over a year later, the star-studded Copper Queens with a new coach, Nora Häuptle, will play Malawi in an international friendly tomorrow at Reiz Arena, formerly known as Woodlands Stadium.

Speaking ahead of the match, Fazili was asked by this reporter to clarify the statement he made in 2023.

“Us coaches in our responses or let me say our technical language, when I say I will beat this team, for us it’s a show of confidence,” he responded.

“In 2023 at the COSAFA, we beat South Africa 4-3 convincingly and when we learnt that we were going to play Zambia in the final, we wanted to intimidate Zambia and psych my players that we could beat Zambia because we managed to defeat South Africa, which was also better than us. Luckily enough, it worked and we beat Zambia in the final.”

Fazili, also said his team is taking the game seriously and that they won’t treat it as a friendly.

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