Football Association of Malawi (Fam) has branded 2016 as a successful year compared to 2015.<\/p>\n
According to the association\u2019s General Secretary, Alfred Gunda, the introduction of Fifa -sponsored Under 15 leagues is an example of their commitment to football development.<\/p>\n
Gunda, who replaced Suzgo Nyirenda recently, said they had lined up many programmes in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year we also managed to assemble the Under 17 squad that performed well in Mauritius by finishing on position three in the Cosafa Under-17 Championship. We also sent the Under-20 team to the Cosafa Under-20 Championship in South Africa,\u201d Gunda said.<\/p>\n
He admitted that the Flames struggled in 2016, but he promised that the association will strategise on how to make the team competitive again, especially after hiring a new coach.<\/p>\n
The association\u2019s Technical Director, John Kaputa, said he was impressed with the progress of the Under-15 leagues, which have since graduated into Under-16s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not want to lose these players. We are tracking them and they will be graduating to the next level every year with an aim of laying a great foundation for the Under 17,20 and senior teams,\u201d Kaputa said.<\/p>\n
But former Be Forward Wanderers chairperson, Humphrey Mvula, has described Gunda\u2019s success claims as incorrect.<\/p>\n
Mvula argued that assembling the Under 17 and 20 to participate in international tournament is not a success.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot assemble a squad in three weeks and expect them to do well in a competition where you have other national teams that always play international friendlies. What happens after the tournaments? We lose the players and start tracking them when another tournament comes. Fam should have a database of these players. Let us have permanent youth coaches for the Under 17 and 20. We also need structures at Fam responsible for these boys. We have a Commercial Director Mr Matola [Limbani], what is he doing in terms of commercialisation?\u201d Mvula questioned.<\/p>\n
He, however, commended the association for the Under-15 leagues.<\/p>\n
\u201cYears back, it was easy tracking a player because we had good structures, beginning from primary schools, where we had the Mayor\u2019s Trophy then Under 12, 14, 17 and 20 teams. The teams had regional coaches,\u201d Mvula added.<\/p>\n
Last year, Fam also organised Caf coaching courses from grade C to A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) has branded 2016 as a successful year compared to 2015. According to the association\u2019s General Secretary, Alfred Gunda, the introduction of Fifa -sponsored Under 15 leagues is an example of their commitment to football development. Gunda, who replaced Suzgo Nyirenda recently, said they had lined up many programmes in 2017. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38239","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\/38239","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=38239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38240,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38239\/revisions\/38240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}