Malawi Under-15 national football team yesterday lost 4-0 to Algeria and 4-2 to Argentina in their last two Group B matches at the Fifa Under-15 World Cup & Festival in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The two defeats mean the Malawi team has now finished third in their six-team group with nine points from five matches.

Effectively, they have slipped to performance Tier C, level three of the tournament’s six performance tiers to be played this Friday. 

According to the competition’s format on Fifa website www.fifa.com, only teams that finish top in their groups progress to Tier A and will be crowned the edition’s champions if they win the final while the rest advance to the other five tiers depending on positions in the group stage.

Algeria have advanced to Tier A after topping the group with 13 points while Argentina have progressed to Tier B for finishing second in the group with 12 points.

In matches monitored of Fifa website, Malawi yesterday only scored two goals in two games but conceded eight. Elisha Nyirenda and Takutzwa Maluwe struck the face savers against Argentina.

Malawi made an impressive  start to the tournament where they registered three straight wins. They started their campaign with a 3-2 comeback victory over Chinese Taipei before beating Oman and Suriname by 3-1 margins.

Malawi Under-15 national team coach Joseph Malizani described the losses as unfortunate, saying his charges put up a good fight despite conceding a myriad of goals.

“All the same, we have to move on because we have shown the world our potential. It is a good feeling to compete against some of the world’s top footballing nations,” he said.

According to www.fifa.com, every team will continue playing through to the final matchday to ensure consistent and meaningful competitive experience for all participants.

“The winners of each tier will be crowned, and the team that come out on top in Tier A will be honoured as FifaU-15 World Cup & Festival champions,” it states.

The eight-a-side competition, divided into 32 groups, attracted 189 under-15 teams from six confederations.

The games are being played on 68x47metre pitches with 40-minute per fixture and unlimited substitutions.