Passport printing challenges affected the Malawi Under-23 team during their home match against Eswatini on Tuesday night at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe.

Malawi lost 1-0 to Eswatini despite dominating proceedings for much of the first half.

A Bola News reporter observed that head coach Bob Mpinganjira was forced to rely on players from the U20 team who had just returned from Mozambique, where they competed in the 2026 COSAFA Cup.

Mpinganjira included Kondwani Tebulo, James Lumbe, Lameck Mithi, Misheck Billiat, Clever Kalambo and Precious Kwalenga from the Under-20 side.

He also called up two players from the senior national team camp, Washali Jaziya and Blessings Kanowa.

In total, eight players who had not trained with the U23 team from the beginning were involved in the squad for the match.

Asked why he changed his team at the eleventh hour, Mpinganjira said his squad had been affected by the passport printing challenges affecting the country.

“We had a problem with passports; this tournament has a requirement to have players who were born from 2005 above. At first we had players born from 2004 and we dropped them for only those born in 2005.

“The difficult part of it was passports, until now the passports are still not yet out, that’s why you see [that our goalkeeper] Precious Masamba was supposed to play for U23 in goals but he was not there, John Nchema same things, lucky enough the U20 return early otherwise we could have a very big problem,” said Mpinganjira.

Other players included in the squad were Joseph Saiwa, Elias Muywanga, Feston Botomani, Lameck George, Kelvin Gondwe, Matamando Matchipisa, Sthera Muyira, Godfrey Sibale, Godfrey Kiokwa, Masambilo Kalua, Steve Nkhata, John Nchema and Precious Masamba, although they were not part of the match.

Malawi reportedly stopped printing passports months ago due to the unavailability of printing paper.