The Malawi women’s soccer team is on fire. What that means for Africa.

Imagine the Faroe Islands beating Germany in men’s soccer. Picture Tajikistan besting Argentina. Those were the kind of odds Malawi’s women’s national team, the Scorchers, faced when they stepped onto the pitch on July 28 in Rabat, Morocco.

The team’s first match in the continental championship was against Nigeria, the defending champion. The Super Falcons towered a full 117 places above Malawi in the FIFA rankings. As if that weren’t bad enough, Nigeria has won 10 of the 13 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) tournaments ever played. This was the first time the Scorchers had even qualified.

“I told the players, forget about all that,” says coach Lovemore Fazili. “In football anything can happen.”

Indeed, when the final whistle blew two hours later, Malawi had rewritten soccer history. A forward with electric blue hair named Temwa Chawinga twice broke through Nigeria’s defensive line, and her sister Tabitha socked away a goal of her own to give the Scorchers a 3-2 victory.

ESPN dubbed it “the biggest upset in WAFCON history.” And a week later, Malawi are on their way to the quarterfinals – putting the world’s 153rd-ranked team one game away from qualifying for the 2027 World Cup. But their shock victory means more than that.

The win was a kind of announcement of the meteoric rise of women’s soccer in Africa. No longer is world class play confined to the continent’s top teams, says professional player and commentator Hannah Baptiste. Even the scrappiest underdogs have “unreal talent.”

In many ways, that should come as little surprise. The informal pitches scratched out on the continent’s street corners and open lots have long produced some of world soccer’s best male players.