There is remote hope for salvation at Surestream Football Academy following foreign investors\u2019 interest in the Blantyre football education facility, which closed shop last week.<\/p>\n
Patrick Kulemeka, who was a technical operations manager at Surestream, confirmed on Friday about the inquiries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI received inquiries from South Africa and Europe. I have since developed a sponsorship concept which I have submitted to them. Initially, they wanted us to send them players, but I told them that we are interested in building on the existing development programme,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kulemeka urged Football Association of Malawi (Fam) to, through the Fifa-funded Under-15 pilot national league, consider utilising the academy, which is based at Surestream Stadium in Chilomoni Township.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor four years, Surestream made some investments and I am sure the owner [Chris Pitman] should be giving in a good word about the facility. For us Malawians, the question is \u2018what did we learn from this investment?\u2019 It was not a Blantyre facility but for the whole nation,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Surestream Petroleum Limited stopped sponsoring the academy, citing falling oil prices on the world market, among others.<\/p>\n
The company invested some K183 million (US$ 250,000) in the academy as part of its corporate social responsibility while eyeing Lake Malawi oil exploration.<\/p>\n
Surestream, has within four years of existence, unearthed talented players such as Brighton Munthali, Levison Maganizo and Ernest Tambe, who are on Malawi senior national team\u2019s ladder.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Fam president, Walter Nyamilandu, whose body has now repossessed Surestream Stadium, vowed to ensure that another investor takes over the facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to identify a partner as soon as possible. They [Surestream] came up with a good model for football development. We will secure the facility. Our plan is to encourage and support academies,\u201d Nyamilandu said last week.<\/p>\n
Fisd Company Limited, which wants to establish an academy in Lilongwe, has since ruled itself out from the Surestream equation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is remote hope for salvation at Surestream Football Academy following foreign investors\u2019 interest in the Blantyre football education facility, which closed shop last week. Patrick Kulemeka, who was a technical operations manager at Surestream, confirmed on Friday about the inquiries. \u201cI received inquiries from South Africa and Europe. I have since developed a sponsorship […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19882","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\/19882","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=19882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19885,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19882\/revisions\/19885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}