Swaziland VS Malawi

Swaziland will play Malawi and Madagascar in the COSAFA Under 20 Tournament, which will take place in Nelspruit, South Africa in December.

The annual regional Under 20 tournament has since been renamed Youth Challenge, it was announced during the draw held in South Africa on Thursday.

Swaziland have been drawn in Group C together with the two countries. Defending champions, South Africa are in group A with Lesotho, Botswana and Mauritius.

Group B is formed by Zambia, Angola, Seychelles and Namibia while Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Comoros form group D.

National Football Association of Swaziland (NFAS) President Adam Bomber Mthethwa confirmed that the draw had been done and that his association was informed about it.

He said COSAFA also informed them about the dates of the games and where it would be played.

He said the coaches would soon submit their programme to be discussed by the technical committee for a way forward regarding the local squad’s preparations for the same.

Newly appointed National Under 20s coach Harris ‘Madze’ Bulunga said they were not yet aware that the draw had been done.

He said, however, the countries they were pitted with were not very strong. He highlighted that Madagascar have improved compared to the last time they played them in 2004.

“We beat Madagascar in 2004 and they have since improved because they won the tournament in 2005. They are the team which will require us to intensify our training, otherwise, Malawi doesn’t have a strong squad,” he said.

Bulunga also mentioned that with the FA’s support, they were going to perform well in the tournament.

He said they met yesterday to finalise their programme which they expected to submit to the FA on Monday.

“We will start our preparations as soon as the schools close for the second term. We are going to be training on weekends as usual because the players are school-going.

However, we have proposed that we have a full time camp which will take at least a week so that we can keep the players together and train them. This, we had planned to do during the holidays because we will not be able to do it when the schools open,” he said.

The coach also mentioned that they already had a base of which they would select players. He said, however, the number was small and they had to add more players (less than 20).

“We will continue with the list that we have currently. The players have qualified through age from the team that we had last year. We have also used the schools tournament to select good players and others were taken from last year’s under 17s squad.

"We are still going to choose other players though because we have to go all around the country, this was just a base,” he said.

He said they were expected to submit their final squad on October 30. The coach further urged schools and parents to support them. “What we can ask is for schools and parents to release the players when we need them for training,” he said.

The tournament, sponsored by Metropolitan after the withdrawal of Vodacom last year, starts on November 29 and will end on December 20. During the draw, Comoros were added as a new member of COSAFA to play in the tournament.

Cosafa U-20 Youth Challenge Draw:

Group A

South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Mauritius

Group B

Zambia, Angola, Seychelles, Namibia

Group C

Swaziland, Madagascar, Malawi

Group D

Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Comoros