Malawi national football team coach, Ernest Mtawali, has sparked a heated debate by proposing the re-alignment of domestic football calendar to that of major leagues for the Flames players\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n
Malawi football calendar runs from April to December, whereas major leagues such as Barclays English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and Absa Premiership in South Africa stretch from August to May.<\/p>\n
The lack of harmony between the local and international calendar will affect TNM Super League stars whose prospect of being selected for the Flames are dim due to the off-season break.<\/p>\n
Mtawali said he would pick the bulk from foreign leagues in South Africa and Mozambique as they are active.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the league running from August to May can help the cause of the national team. Some leagues are active, but we are on recess. Definitely, it\u2019s going to affect the national team. Let us go by the calendar of major leagues such as that of South Africa. This is just a suggestion to the football authorities,\u201d Mtawali said.<\/p>\n
Flames midfielder, John Banda, during the week confirmed that \u201csome of us have not started training yet so for the betterment of the team; it is better they use those who are active.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Nyasa Big Bullets and Silver Strikers defender, Panganeni Ndovi, shared Sulom\u2019s sentiments that the domestic football pitches have poor drainage system that renders playing during the rainy season impossible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a need for Sulom to have all days set for national teams\u2019 games and not fix games on those days just like the way they do it in Mozambique. It matters less whether your players are taking part in the games or not but if the national team is playing then all league games are cancelled,\u201d Ndovi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national coach should have at least players that are regulars and are playing better so that during off season if the Flames would want to play games then a team can be built around those players,\u201d Ndovi said in an e-mailed response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi national football team coach, Ernest Mtawali, has sparked a heated debate by proposing the re-alignment of domestic football calendar to that of major leagues for the Flames players\u2019 benefit. Malawi football calendar runs from April to December, whereas major leagues such as Barclays English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and Absa Premiership in South […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18718","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\/18718","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=18718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18720,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18718\/revisions\/18720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}