{"id":3121,"date":"2025-09-12T12:13:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swazidailynews.com\/?p=3121"},"modified":"2025-09-12T12:13:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:13:36","slug":"bleak-week-for-eswatini-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genesisekucalenimedia.com\/edn\/3121\/sports\/soccer\/bleak-week-for-eswatini-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Bleak week for Eswatini football"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By Sibusiso Masilela<br \/><br \/>It has been a bleak week for Eswatini football.<br \/><br \/>This follows the national Under 17 humiliating 3-0 loss to Comoros in the 2025 COSAFA Under 17 championships.<br \/><br \/>This was during a Group A opener played on Thursday at the Ngoni Mwos Stadium in Zimbabwe, adding more misery to local football, Following Sihlangu back-to-back loses to Cameroon and Libya in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers.<br \/><br \/>The Islanders&#8217; victory was inspired by a Mathias Ali Brace and Fasifidine Ahamada on each half.<br \/><br \/>Gama lamented the loss during the post-match interview.<br \/><br \/>\u201cWe played well as my players stuck to our game plan, which was not to allow Comoros to score first. We lost shape towards the end of the first half during the opposition&#8217;s goal. We lost shape during the Second half,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3128\" src=\"https:\/\/genesisekucalenimedia.com\/edn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/back-2-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"852\" \/><br \/><br \/>The result dented the junior national team&#8217;s chances of advancing to the semifinals of the development knockout tournament.<br \/><br \/>The local lads will now take on hosts Zimbabwe on September 13, 2025, at the same venue before wrapping up the group against neighbours Mozambique two days later.<br \/><br \/>The competition serves as a qualifier for the 2026 AFCON Under 17 championships, with the four semi-finalists securing their spots in the continental tournament scheduled for Morocco.<\/p>\n<p><strong><div class=\"_df_book df-lite\" id=\"3089\"  data-title=\"\" wpoptions=\"true\" thumbtype=\"\" ><\/div><\/strong><br \/><br \/><strong>Group A Fixtures:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sept 13: Mozambique vs Comoros (noon, Ngoni Mwos Stadium)<br \/>Sept 13: Zimbabwe vs Eswatini (3pm, Ngoni Mwos Stadium)<br \/>Sept 15: Eswatini vs Mozambique (3pm, Hearts Stadium)<br \/>Sept 15: Zimbabwe vs Comoros (3pm, Ngoni Mwos Stadium<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sibusiso Masilela It has been a bleak week for Eswatini football. This follows the national Under 17&hellip;","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,43],"tags":[46,79,70,39,73,58,53,54],"class_list":["post-3121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","category-sports","tag-africa","tag-betway-premiership","tag-caf","tag-entertainment","tag-eswatini","tag-national","tag-soccer","tag-sports","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bleak week for Eswatini football - Eswatini Daily News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/genesisekucalenimedia.com\/edn\/3121\/sports\/soccer\/bleak-week-for-eswatini-football\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bleak week for Eswatini football - Eswatini Daily News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Sibusiso Masilela It has been a bleak week for Eswatini football. 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