Malawi seeded in Cosafa Cup set for May

Malawi national football team, the Flames will be seeded from the preliminary round of the 2015 Cosafa Cup due to their Fifa ranking position.

The Flames are ranked fifth in Cosafa according to February rankings behind South Africa, Zambia, Angola and Mozambique in the order and ahead of Botswana on sixth.

They are on position 93 in the World and 26 in Africa in the latest rankings.

The Cosafa Cup takes places in South Africa’s North West province from May 17-31 as the best in the region vie for the prestigious crown.

According to Cosafa the competition will retain the old format where by the lower eight participating sides according to the February FIFA rankings will compete in the first round, where they will be drawn into two pool each comprising four teams.

The top team in each group will advance to the knockout stage of the tournament, where the six higher ranked sides will join the tournament from the quarterfinals on-wards.

During the last competition Malawi lost to Zimbabwe in the quarterfinals on post-match penalties and went on to lose 3-2 to Angola in a plate competition for those sides knocked out in the quarterfinals.

Flames have never won the cup since its inception in 1997, but were losing finalists twice in succession in 2002 and 2003 losing to South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively. So far 12 of the 14 Cosafa nations having confirmed their participation with Comoros Islands pulling out, while Angola will make a decision on their entry shortly.

The draw for the 2015 tournament will take place in Johannesburg on Thursday, February 26, and will be broadcast live on SuperSport 4 from 18h00.

Cosafa is made up of Angola, Botswana, the Comoros Islands, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, the Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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