On Saturday 8 September 2012, Malawi lost 2-0 to Ghana in a first leg, second round 2-13 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifier played at the Ohene Jan Stadium.

Full of hope

Beaten in the first leg, Malawi will now hope to overturn the two goal deficit when the two teams meet in October in the reverse tie from where the aggregate winner will qualify for the African showpiece to be held in South Africa from 9 January 2013.

Speaking to www.cafonline.com, Malawi’s head Coach Kinnah Phiri is full of hope that his team will still sail through.

Good game

The result does not discourage me. We have seen teams come from behind to win games. We are not disappointed at all as our performance has shown that we are capable of coming back.

Ghana has a lot of star players most of whom are playing in Europe. We don’t have the luxury of foreign-based players, but I must say it was a good game from my players. The performance of my players is enough an encouragement that we can still do it at home.

James Sangala

I think we still have a chance. We have not given up. We have always come down from a defeat in our backyard and managed to qualify. We will sweat blood to get the results we need. We will sit down and look at our shortcomings, work on them before the next game.

Malawi is certain to play without James Sangala who from a second bookable offense was ejected from the Ghana game five minutes to time.