Flames interim coach Kallisto Pasuwa says although the team’s last two 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifiers are dead rubbers, they are determined to win.

The Malawi National Football Team is this afternoon expected to fly to Ivory Coast to face Burundi on Thursday before hosting Burkina Faso at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe four days later.

Burundi are using Ivory Coast as home ground for logistical purposes because they have another tie in West Africa.

The Flames assembled on Monday morning ahead of their trip to West Africa.

Pasuwa said on Monday although the matches are of academic interest, it will be crucial to salvage out something from the campaign.

“Every coach needs a good result, but it needs to come from somewhere. However, you just can’t wake up and have the result. We need to build a team that will compete on the international stage,” he said.

The Zimbabwean tactician added that they will build a team around the senior players.

“We called everyone so that we can build a team around some of the senior players if we are to come up with a good team. We [also] need to have confidence,” Pasuwa said.

“We cannot just throw away the two games just because we are out. We must push ourselves to do well.”

He said 13 of the 25 players that were called into camp turned up on their first day of training on Monday.

“We’ll have little time with the guys as we are leaving this Tuesday, but we have tried to tell everyone that the reason we called them up was that we recognise their talents and they need to put in maximum effort to be good in whatever they do,” he said.

“With what we have seen so far, the players have responded well. Some players had games at their respective clubs on Monday and we could not push them so much since they were recovering. But what I can say is that so far so good.”

The interim technical panel has recalled some foreign-based players such as striker Frank Gabadinho Mhango and forgotten Romania-based defender Charles Petro.