The Malawi U17 boys National team aim for a bright start as they  face Mozambique in their opening match of the 2025 TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations-Cosafa Qualifier at the UJ AW Mulla Stadium on Wednesday afternoon.

Coach Enos Chatama will have a squad of 17 players at his disposal as the remaining two players (Geoffrey Chinyama and Chikondi Howa) who remained behind due to the delay in the processing of their travel documents will not arrive in time for the match.

The Junior Flames were close to qualifying for AFCON finals during the last qualifiers in 2022 but lost 5-1 to South Africa in the semifinal in Lilongwe.

Chatama says his charges are ready to a challenge for a place at AFCON.

“We  had good preparations for the tournament and the boys are ready  and up to the challenge.

“We travelled with 17 players and two will be arriving tomorrow. It’s quite a setback considering the fact that we wanted all the players to be here in time for the tournament.

“We have never seen how the current Mozambique team plays since the U17 national  teams have been inactive for two years but having watched their U20 play, we have a picture of how their Juniors will show up so we have prepared very well and we believe that it will be a game where a team which prepares well will have the advantage of collecting the maximum points,” he said.

Meanwhile, all the 17 players have passed the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) test which they underwent earlier in the morning and are available for selection.

Malawi will face Angola on Friday before wrapping up the group stages on Sunday against Lesotho

Group stage leaders and the best second placed team will qualify to the competition’s semifinals with the two finalists booking a place in the Afcon finals which will be hosted by Ivory Coast next year.