Without a win in five Group L games and a battered reputation on the continent, Malawi National Football Team, the Flames, drained an estimated K200 million on the botched 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifying campaign, Malawi News has established.<\/p>\n
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Finance and Administration Manager, Christopher Mdolo, confirmed the figure following the disastrous campaign. The Flames are also out of 2016 Cosafa Castle Cup after losing 1-0 to Lesotho on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
According to Mdolo, the association spent an estimated K102 million on home and away fixtures against Guinea, whereas roughly K30 million was spent when hosting Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
The association is likely to spend K30 million when entertaining Swaziland in their last qualifying campaign for the group in September.<\/p>\n
So far, Fam has been allocated K32 million from the Sports Council in this financial year of which K17 million was already spent on the Afcon game against Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
Prophet Shepherd Bushiri also donated K44 million towards the team\u2019s trip to Guinea. According to Fam website, the association needed K105 million to fulfill home and away fixtures against Guinea.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur budget for the Guinea match was K105 million and we only had K65 million in our coffers K50million from Flames\u2019 official sponsors Carlsberg Malawi and the K15 million from Airtel Malawi) leaving us with K40 million deficit,\u201d Fam General Secretary, Sugzo Nyirenda, was quoted by Fam website after receiving the donation from Bushiri.<\/p>\n
Nyirenda had not responded to Malawi News questionnaire by Thursday.<\/p>\n
However, on Thursday, Fam President, Walter Nyamilandu, could not guarantee the Flames\u2019 participation in the next Afcon race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will depend on the availability of funds but for now funding is a limiting factor,\u201d Nyamilandu said in brief response.<\/p>\n
However, some soccer analysts have said the money spent on the botched Afcon campaign was enough to invest in the junior sides to build strong teams for the future.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Fam withdrew the Under-17 and 20 from continental competitions, due to lack of money. Malawi has also not been participating in African Nations Championship.<\/p>\n
One of the soccer commentators, Enos Chatama, said despite a disastrous campaign the nation has learnt something from the Afcon race.<\/p>\n
Chatama said spending over K200 million on the botched Afcon race was justifiable, but believes the nation missed an opportunity when it pulled out from the Under-17 and 20 competitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a nation, it seems we have dumped junior teams because we are focusing much on building the roof instead of foundation. There are no short cuts in football and we are depending much on recycled players.<\/p>\n
We lack a strategy sometimes,\u201d Chatama explained.<\/p>\n
At the ongoing Cosafa Cup in Namibia, some nations including Angola and South Africa have featured junior sides, an indication that they are rebuilding teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe coach was under intense pressure and he desperately needs to save his job. Soccer fans were also expecting a lot from the team,\u201d Chatama added.<\/p>\n
Fam First-Vice President, James Mwenda, who is also the head of sub-technical committee, said the disastrous Afcon campaign had positives and negatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been one of the worst Afcon campaigns we have ever had but on a positive note, we saw a new crop of players who are also giving us hope that we will have a stronger team in future,\u201d Mwenda said.<\/p>\n
Brighton Munthali, Stanley Sanudi, Isaac Kaliati and Rafiq Namwera are some of the new crop of players to have featured for the Flames in the Afcon campaign.<\/p>\n
In the 2017 qualifiers, the Flames managed only two points from five games after losing three games and two draws. They lost 2-1 and 0-3 to Zimbabwe\u2019s Warriors and lost 2-1 to Guinea at Kamuzu Stadium, a week after an away 1-1 tie in Conakry while also being held 2-2 by Swaziland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Without a win in five Group L games and a battered reputation on the continent, Malawi National Football Team, the Flames, drained an estimated K200 million on the botched 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifying campaign, Malawi News has established. Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Finance and Administration Manager, Christopher Mdolo, confirmed the figure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26441","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\/26441","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=26441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26444,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441\/revisions\/26444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}