On Saturday, the Malawi men’s national football team registered a fifth draw against Lesotho at Toyota Stadium in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in a friendly match.

This means Malawi has faced Lesotho 17 times and is still winless; the only achievement from the encounter was to register a clean sheet.

Malawi, ranked 128th on the FIFA rankings, had hopes to win the match in order to improve on the rankings per coach Kallisto Pasuwa; however, they drew against a team ranked 144.

But Pasuwa is happy with the outcome despite missing scoring opportunities. He is confident that Malawi will be ready for the 2027 AFCON qualifiers starting in September 2026.

“We’re building a team” – Pasuwa.

“It was a tactical game where we had our chances, but we missed them. They [Lesotho] also had their chances, but we managed to deal with them.

“My boys did well; well done to Lesotho for the show. People should know that we are building a team, and it needs time. Today’s game showed us that we were prepared to play.

People might say I delayed in making changes, but you do not change just for the sake of changing; we were okay, hence not making early changes,” said Pasuwa.

Lesotho coach Leslie Notši admitted that one of his team’s major challenges is scoring goals despite that they are able to create enormous chances.

“We created goal-scoring opportunities, but I think we were not clinical enough in front of the goals. I think more games like this one will give our players more exposure. Despite the draw, we are taking a lot of positives out of this match going into the Tuesday game,” said Notsi.

The two teams will face again on Tuesday next week in another friendly match in South Africa.

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