Malawi and South Africa battle for bronze medal

Malawi will look to cap off a fine showing at the 2023 COSAFA Cup when they face hosts South Africa in the third-place playoff at the King Zwelithini Stadium in Durban on Sunday afternoon.

Kick-off is at 3pm CAT (SA, GMT+2)

The Flames caused an early upset in the tournament when they beat defending champions Zambia 1-0 in the group stages on July 6 before going on to reach the semifinals for the first time since 2003.

Patrick Mabedi's side were the only team to win all three of their group matches and advance to the knockout stages without conceding any goals, although Lesotho finally breached their defence on Friday.

The Crocodiles took the lead through Jane Thaba-Ntso after just 18 minutes on the KwaZulu-Natal coast, but Chawanangwa Kaonga restored parity from the spot eight minutes later to take the match into extra time.

Malawi would end up missing all three penalties in the shootout as Lesotho won 3-0 to book their place in the final against the Copper Bullets, who beat Bafana Bafana 2-1 later that same evening.

South Africa also suffered their first defeat in the competition after topping Group A with two wins and a draw.

The former five-time winners, who bowed out in the quarterfinals last year, opened the scoring through Tshegofatso Mabaso in the final minute of the first half, but Golden Mashata (50') and Albert Kangwanda (69') responded for Chipolopolo to keep their title defence alive.

Bafana coach Ramoreboli acknowledged they were made to pay for a slow start to the second half, although he praised his players for getting as far as they did.

"I think we lost it in the second half in the first 15 minutes," Ramoreboli told SuperSport. "We spoke about aggression in the final third and if you remember the goal we conceded in the second half - the first goal.

"It's more or less the same goal we conceded against Eswatini, but we failed to clear the ball and we conceded again from a set-play which really even the goalkeeper could not get where the ball was played.

"It's a game of football, disappointing results, very, very disappointing but I'm happy with the effort. I'm proud of what these guys did from the beginning of the tournament up until today. It's just unfortunate we could not go through to the finals."

Looking ahead to Sunday's clash, he added: "Another difficult game, but we have 23 players here and all of them have contributed to put us to the semis and they must all get an opportunity to play because after all I still believed we were here to go to the final.

"Unfortunately, it didn't happen and everybody who is here will get an opportunity to play and we have good players who can compete once again and at least get us the bronze medal."