Pundits differ with Mabedi

Despite Flames coach Patrick Mabedi’s declaration that the team is ready for the upcoming 2026 World Cup qualifiers, some pundits have argued that the performance tells a different story.

Responding to a question on whether the team is ready during a post-match press conference after a 2-1 defeat to Zambia’s Chipolopolo in the Four Nations Tournament on Tuesday that was preceded by the 4-0 humiliation at the hands of Kenya, the Flames gaffer said: “Absolutely! We are ready.”

The Flames will face Sao Tome and Principe and Equatorial Guinea in the global showpiece’s qualifiers between June 3 and 11.

But Flames legend Kinnah Phiri as well as football analysts Charles Nyirenda and Kevin Moyo said based on the team’s performance in the tournament, there is a lot to be done for the team to be in shape.

Said Kinnah in an interview yesterday: “Having watched both games, my take is that the team is not ready and the coach should not live in denial.

“The performance was scrappy and disjointed. Honestly, I don’t see us standing the heat against teams like Equatorial Guinea.”

The all-time Flames leading scorer said the unfortunate part is that there is no other Fifa window that can give the coach a chance to work on the shortfalls between now and the qualifiers.

He said: “The coach said the tournament was about trying some new players and out of nine or 10 uncapped players that were in his squad, we only saw two, if not three players.

“Now, you tend to wonder what his objective really was.”

On the other hand, Nyirenda said: “He [Mabedi] may see it that way, but the performance of the team tells a different story. Just imagine, in two matches with separate teams, the side conceded six goals and scored once.

“In the first game against Kenya, the coach fielded new players while in yesterday’s [Tuesday] game, the majority of the trusted ones were available and the team still lost the match and all that has happened on home soil.”

He said worse still, the two defeats come on the back of another (1-0) loss against Tunisia at home.

Said Nyirenda: “In the World Cup campaign in June, we take on Equatorial Guinea who were outstanding at the 2023 Afcon [Africa Cup of Nations] in January. Let us hope the performance will be better than what we have just seen. Otherwise, there is doom ahead.”

On his part, Moyo said: “I do not agree with the notion that the team is ready for World Cup qualifiers.

“The biggest challenge with our team is failure to learn from mistakes, You will notice that in the match against Kenya, we conceded two goals within five minutes and it was the same against Zambia.

“Now, if you look at the pattern, we are making the same tactical mistakes which is worrisome going forward.”

He suggested the need for Mabedi to incorporate a professional match day analyst in his technical team “to assist in suchareas, otherwise things don’t look good if we continue to conduct business as usual”.

However, Mabedi insisted that the Flames are ready for the qualifiers as he already has a team and the purpose of the tournament was to assess some tactical combinations.

He said there is enough time to tighten the loose ends with over two months before the World Cup qualifiers.

“The purpose of the tournament was to check if some players can fit in various situations if we make some tactical changes and we saw what we wanted,” said Mabedi.

“For instance, we tried to see how Wisdom [Mpinganjira] could adapt if switched to a different position. We also made similar changes to the backline. It was unusual, but necessary for us to assess the players.”

The coach said it was better to suffer in two matches while fine-tuning the team “than impress the public now, but fail to deliver in the up-coming qualifiers”.

He said there was a great improvement in his team’s performance in the game against Zambia as compared to their first match against Kenya.

“If you noticed, in our game against Kenya, we had a single shot on target and maybe three corners, but in the second match, we got into the box more often and had at least eight corners,” said Mabedi.

“That means we attacked more, but what we lack is a good finisher.”