The excitement continues in the African qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, after a new crisis emerged regarding the confrontation between Malawi and Equatorial Guinea, as the Guinean players refused to travel to play the match in protest against the local Football Association, which led to the match being officially canceled hours before its start.
The match was scheduled to be held this Thursday evening at the Bingu National Stadium in the Malawian capital, Lilongwe, as part of the ninth round of qualifiers, but the Malawi Federation announced its cancellation in an official statement in which it referred to “exercise travel circumstances related to the visiting team.”
The text of the statement reads as follows: “The Malawi Football Association announces that the World Cup qualifier match between Malawi and Equatorial Guinea, scheduled for today at the Bingo National Stadium, will not take place due to unforeseen travel circumstances related to the visiting team.”
The reason for canceling the match between Malawi and Equatorial Guinea
Press reports revealed that Equatorial Guinea national team players refused to travel to Malawi, in protest against the local football association due to escalating financial and administrative disputes.
It was reported that the crisis between the players and the federation officials has been ongoing for more than a year and a half, amid accusations of “corruption and poor governance,” which erupted after the team’s distinguished performance in the 2023 African Cup of Nations and its exit from the quarter-finals.
The group’s position after the cancellation of the Malawi-Guinea Bissau match
It is expected that the match will be counted as a legal victory for the Malawi national team with a score of (3-0), which will give it three valuable points that temporarily move it closer to second place in the group.
Malawi raised its score to 10 points, making it only two points away from runner-up Namibia (12 points), which faces Liberia this evening, while Tunisia leads the group with 22 points after officially ensuring qualification to the 2026 World Cup.
As for the Equatorial Guinea national team, which had the same credit as Malawi before the cancellation, its chances of competing diminished, in light of the internal crisis that struck the team and led to the absence of administrative harmony and stability.
Details of the devastating crisis within the Equatorial Guinea national team
The beginnings of the disputes go back to February 2024, when Emilio Nsaoui, the team’s top scorer in the 2023 Nations Cup, released a controversial video clip in which he attacked local federation officials, accusing them of “embezzling the team’s funds.”
After that, the player was suspended internationally before later returning to participate, but the atmosphere of division continues to dominate the team until today.
These developments raise concerns less than two months before the start of the 2025 African Cup of Nations, as the Equatorial Guinea national team is in a strong group that includes Algeria, Burkina Faso and Sudan, amid questions about the extent of its ability to overcome its internal crises before the continental tournament.
