The Flames Regroup

November 19 is FIFA’s fixed date for friendly matches. It seems most national teams will take advantage of the day. The friendly matches will likely be very competitive considering that most professional players will take part in the friendly matches.

The Flames regroup next Monday in preparation for a friendly on November 19 versus either Mali, Togo, Sudan or Libya. There are also three other teams (including Zambia) that have expressed an interest in sizing up with the Flames.

Since the Flames are in the same group as Ivory Coast, Guinea and Burkina Faso preference should be given to West African Teams. I think a friendly against either Mali or Togo would be the most beneficial to Malawi. Mali are in the same region as Ivory Coast, Guinea and Burkina Faso. Though there is no positive correlation between region and type of play, teams coming from the same region may have played against each other quite a lot and sometimes their games ended in draws and sometimes one team would win today and the other one the next day and we may infer that they tend to play the same style. That is, if you believe that if A = B, and that B = C, then A must be equal to C.

Playing a friendly against a team from East or Central Africa wouldn’t be that beneficial to the Flames unless they just want to use it as a way of raising money (through gate collections) for the other friendly matches. Like I stated before in my post (NOW THAT YOU KNOW YOUR OPPONENTS, WHAT’S NEXT?) below, friendly matches should be meaningful. For instance, Tunisia will play a friendly against Ghana in Accra on November 19, 2008. Tunisia and Nigeria are in the same group. Ghana and Nigeria are fierce West African rivals. So, Tunisia’s friendly against Ghana makes a lot of sense.

Egypt and Zambia are in the same group. Though Tanzania and Zambia are from the same region, Egypt have chosen to play a friendly against Benin over Tanzania because Tanzania are a weaker team and pretty much, Benin, Zambia and Rwanda play same style.

If Algeria need to have a feel of Zambia they will need to play a friendly against Malawi. Considering that Malawi beat Egypt 1-0, if Algeria can beat Malawi in Blantyre by at least 3-0 we can extrapolate that Algeria will beat Egypt in Cairo. It seems I have touched a live wire here.