{"id":240578,"date":"2026-08-07T19:50:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/malawi-zambia-malawi-book-wafcon-quarter-final-spot-despite-defeat-to-zambia-in-group-c-thriller\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T19:50:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:50:57","slug":"malawi-zambia-malawi-book-wafcon-quarter-final-spot-despite-defeat-to-zambia-in-group-c-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/malawi-zambia-malawi-book-wafcon-quarter-final-spot-despite-defeat-to-zambia-in-group-c-thriller\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi\/Zambia: Malawi Book Wafcon Quarter-Final Spot Despite Defeat to Zambia in Group C Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"45\">Malawi have reached the quarter-finals of the 2026 Women&#8217;s Africa Cup of Nations despite going down 2-1 to neighbours Zambia in their final Group C fixture on Wednesday night &#8212; with the Scorchers progressing on a mini-league tiebreaker after three sides finished level on points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"4\">Sloppy start proves costly<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"47\">Zambia made the perfect start, needing just two minutes to break the deadlock. Captain Barbara Banda drifted in from the left, cut inside her marker and drilled a fierce effort towards goal that&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202608060177.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zambia\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zambia\/\">Zambia<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malawi have reached the quarter-finals of the 2026 Women&#8217;s Africa Cup of Nations despite going down 2-1 to neighbours Zambia in their final Group C fixture on Wednesday night &#8212; with the Scorchers progressing on a mini-league tiebreaker after three sides finished level on points. Sloppy start proves costly Zambia made the perfect start, needing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[825],"tags":[258,256,8306,6531,5192,5028,27199,257,19316,254,7506,14053,24869,4709,881],"class_list":["post-240578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zambia","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-book","tag-defeat","tag-group","tag-malawi","tag-malawizambia","tag-news","tag-quarterfinal","tag-south-africa-today","tag-spot","tag-thriller","tag-wafcon","tag-zambia","tag-zambia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}