Former Skippers and DD Sunshine defender-cum-midfielder, Chisomo Kazisonga, made history when she became the second Malawi women\u2019s national football team player to secure a move to Europe after Tabitha Chawinga.<\/p>\n
Emulating the good example of Sweden-based striker, Chawinga, the national team skipper, Kazisonga signed for Austrian second-tier league side, SV Neulengbach.<\/p>\n
Initially, Kazisonga trained with Neulengbach\u2019s senior team, but she did not make the grade, hence was told to start from scratch with the reserve team.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the captain underlined her class in foreign land and scored some vital goals in her debut season.<\/p>\n
Recently, Kazisonga added to his defensive duties by grabbing a brace in 6-2 victory over FC Altera in a league game.<\/p>\n
Her decision-making on the pitch makes her one of the best on the local scene.<\/p>\n
Kazisonga, who is also studying sports science in Austria, is surely a rare gem. She is always calm and a true leader on and off the pitch.<\/p>\n
The exporting of footballers to Europe in the year coincided with Malawi women\u2019s national football team\u2019s return onto the international stage after a three-year hibernation.<\/p>\n
Malawi travelled to play a warm-up at Azam Sports Complex Ground, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.<\/p>\n
Despite losing the match 2-0, the visiting team made some great strides when it climbed 14 places up on the world women\u2019s football ranking to position 134 out of 140 ranked teams in the world.<\/p>\n
Malawi will enter the 2016 on position 19 in Africa.<\/p>\n
Overall, Nigeria are Africa\u2019s best, according to the latest ranking.<\/p>\n
Malawi coach, Thom Mkolongo, travelled to Tanzania minus Chawinga and Kazisonga, who could not be flown for the Tanzania game due to financial constraints.<\/p>\n
Instead Mkolongo placed trust in experienced attacker, Linda Kasenda, Sungeni Msiska, Bridget Mkuzilire and Tabitha\u2019s younger sister, Temwa,<\/p>\n
Overall, Football Association of Malawi (Fam) recently announced that it will also arrange another friendly game for the team.<\/p>\n
However, in the absence of a national league, most of women\u2019s footballers are dormant on the local scene. The good news is that Fam technical director, John Kaputa, has promised to launch a national 12-member league in 2016 involving Under-20 players from clubs and schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Skippers and DD Sunshine defender-cum-midfielder, Chisomo Kazisonga, made history when she became the second Malawi women\u2019s national football team player to secure a move to Europe after Tabitha Chawinga. Emulating the good example of Sweden-based striker, Chawinga, the national team skipper, Kazisonga signed for Austrian second-tier league side, SV Neulengbach. Initially, Kazisonga trained with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15389,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15378\/revisions\/15389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}