Malawi and South Africa will go head-to-head for third place at the 2023 COSAFA Cup in Sunday's encounter at the King Zwelithini Stadium.
Malawi were dumped out on penalties by Lesotho in the semi-final, while host nation South Africa fell to a narrow 2-1 defeat against Zambia.
Match preview
Despite playing the majority of the game with a man advantage, Malawi failed to see off the threat of Lesotho in Friday's last-four encounter.
Patrick Mabedi's men trailed to Jane Thaba Ntso's opener but soon drew level through Chawanangwa Kaonga's equaliser, which took the game to penalties, where the Flames failed to convert any of their opening three spot-kicks.
That was a first defeat in six matches across all competitions for Malawi since they were emphatically beaten 4-0 by Egypt in the AFCON qualifiers.
Coming up next is the challenge of an opposing outfit who have come out on top in just one of the previous 10 editions of this fixture across all competitions.
Having already recorded their best-ever COSAFA Cup finish, the East Africans will now be looking to end the competition on a positive note.
From a seemingly strong position, South Africa were on the receiving end of a 2-1 defeat against Zambia at the Princess Magogo Stadium on Friday evening.
Morena Ramoreboli's men took the lead through Tshegofatso Mabasa before goals from Golden Mashata and Albert Kangwanda turned the game on its head.
That loss brought an end to the Bafana Bafana's 10-game unbeaten run, which kicked off in September 2022 with a 4-0 demolition of Sierra Leone.
While a third-place is not what they hoped to achieve on home turf at the beginning of the competition, South Africa will be looking to put on a show for their supporters nonetheless.
Team News
Chawanangwa Kaonga has netted in his last two appearances for Malawi, and the 28-year-old will be looking to come up with the goods once again.
Kaonga is expected to be joined in attack by Jaccama Kumwembe, who will be looking to add to his one COSAFA Cup goal so far, which came against Seychelles in the group stages.
South Africa's Tshegofatso Mabasa currently sits at the top of the scoring charts with three strikes, making him one to keep an eye on here.
Lancaster Human had to make do with a place on the bench against Zambia last time out, but the midfielder could earn a recall to the starting XI for this one.
Malawi possible starting lineup:
Munthali; Sanudi, Mwase, Chembezi; Idana, Mwaungulu, Aaron, Lungu, Nkhoma; Kaonga, Kumwembe
South Africa possible starting lineup:
Mzimela; Lakay, Mohamme, Allan, Sikhakhane; Cele, Mthethwa, Mogalia; Kapinga, Mabasa, Rayners
We say: Malawi 1-2 South Africa
With both teams still hurting from losing their respective semi-final ties, we are expecting an open and end to end affair. That said, we are tipping South Africa to narrowly edge out Malawi and claim a podium finish.
Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Malawi win with a probability of 46.13%. A draw had a probability of 28% and a win for South Africa had a probability of 25.9%.
The most likely scoreline for a Malawi win was 1-0 with a probability of 14.01%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (9.32%) and 2-1 (8.57%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (12.9%), while for a South Africa win it was 0-1 (9.71%). The actual scoreline of 0-0 was predicted with a 10.5% likelihood.
