06 Sep 2019

The senior national football team, Zebras, will host Malawi in a World Cup qualifier in Francistown tomorrow.

The match is scheduled for 4pm. 

Botswana Football Association (BFA) spokesperson, Tumo Mpatane, said in an interview that the team was ready for the encounter.

Mpatane said coach Adel Amrouche had assembled a 22-man squad, which started a training camp on Sunday.

He said the presence of Mogakolodi ‘Tsotso’ Ngele, Simisani Mathumo and Onkabetse Makgantai would be a big boost for the Zebras.

He said Makgantai impressed football enthusiasts during the previous COSAFA competition in South Africa. 

And he would be expected to continue this national team form. 

Mpatane further appealed to Batswana to attend the game in large numbers. 

The last time the Zebras and the Flames locked horns in a World Cup qualifier was in 2004 and 2005.

Botswana beat Malawi 5-1 on aggregate.

In this preliminary round, 28 teams were paired to compete over two legs.

The full pairings for Cosafa teams are as follows: Ethiopia vs Lesotho, Somalia vs Zimbabwe, Eritrea vs Namibia, Djibouti vs eSwatini, the Gambia vs Angola, Mauritius vs Mozambique and Seychelles vs Rwanda.

The other fixtures are South Sudan vs Equatorial Guinea, Chad vs Sudan, Liberia vs Sierra Leone, Sao Tome & Principe vs Guinea-Bissau, Comoros vs Togo while Tanzania date Burundi in an East African derby.

Winners will then join 26 other teams to be divided into 10 groups of four each. 

At the end of the group stage, the 10 group winners will be paired, based on ranking, to compete in a two-legged play-off round.

The final five winners would represent Africa at the FIFA World Cup to be hosted by Qatar in 2022. ends