With lingering doubts on his coaching pedigree and experience, Gerald Phiri Senior, on being unveiled as Malawi National Football Team Coach in Blantyre on Wednesday, insisted that he should not be judged based on past results.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a big challenge. Very huge. It is not going to be easy but I will give it my best,\u201d said the former Malawi Under-20 National Team coach, who did not win in three games at the 2016 Cosafa Youth Championship in South Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet us forget the past and concentrate on the task at hand. I do not want to work under pressure. I know people will be expecting results. We have 15 days before we play against Madagascar [in the 2018 African Nations Championship (Chan) qualifiers]. We will not make excuses but work in accordance with what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 47-year-old, who while working as an assistant coach to Ernest Mtawali were two games away from steering the Junior Flames to the 2015 Africa Youth Championship finals, has former Malawi Under-17 National Football Team coach, Derklerk Msakakuona as his deputy with Peter Mponda and Phillip Nyasulu named Team Manager and Goalkeepers\u2019\u2019 Trainer, respectively.<\/p>\n
The Caf A Licence-holder\u2019s last club job was at Azam Tigers. As head coach, he is yet to win silverware in the Super League, having also managed teams such as the now defunct Blackpool.<\/p>\n
Phiri faces a tough task to manage the Flames in the Chan qualifiers followed by 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Group B battles against Morocco, Comoros Islands and Cameroon.<\/p>\n
Appearing to slow down on an unpopular decision to hire an expatriate coach, Football Association of Malawi (Fam) General Secretary, Alfred Gunda, when unveiling the new panel on a one-year contract, insisted that Phiri represents the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis appointment is about growing the game together. The panel was appointed after consultations and we looked at several factors that contributed to past results. This appointment will continue being the government\u2019s responsibility in terms of remuneration,\u201d Gunda said.<\/p>\n
The Fam GS adding that Phiri, who also released a 27-member squad to start camp training on Sunday, was hired to keep the team going as the association explores the option of hiring an expatriate coach.<\/p>\n
There are no surprises in the squad of home based players, save for Premier Bet Wizards\u2019 midfielder Simeon Singa, Be Forward Wanderers winger Mike Kaziputa, Blue Eagles\u2019 Gilbert Chirwa, Chisomo Mpachika (Silver Strikers defender) and Mafco\u2019s Paul Ndlovu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With lingering doubts on his coaching pedigree and experience, Gerald Phiri Senior, on being unveiled as Malawi National Football Team Coach in Blantyre on Wednesday, insisted that he should not be judged based on past results. \u201cIt is a big challenge. Very huge. It is not going to be easy but I will give it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43485","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\/43485","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=43485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43535,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43485\/revisions\/43535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}