Newly appointed Malawi National Football Team Coach, Ronny van Geneugden, has branded questions about his lack of international football experience as mere talk from negative minds.<\/p>\n
The 48-year-old is working for the first time in Africa and as a national team coach. He, however, played for top clubs back home in Belgium before venturing into management, including in Cyprus where he last worked.<\/p>\n
Van Geneugden, however, said there was always an entry point in coaching, citing Belgium current Coach, Roberto Martinez, who before his appointment, had never managed a national team.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn my first time as a national team coach, when I was a young player of 16 or 17 and I was talented, then people said \u2018you must give him a chance [to play in the senior team] because he needs experience to grow,\u201d Geneugden explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd negative people said, \u2018you cannot put him in the team because he has no experience.\u2019 But when can you have experience? When you can show it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frenchman Herve Renard had also not coached a national team before he led Zambia to the 2012 Afcon title.<\/p>\n
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Geneugden succeeded Hugo Broos at Genk FC in Belgium. On his first national team assignment with Cameroon, Broos won the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) championship.<\/p>\n
However, unlike Malawi, Cameroon has over 100 players in top clubs in Europe and the country boasts of many football academies.<\/p>\n
Football Association of Malawi President, Walter Nyamilandu, when unveiling the coach in Blantyre on Saturday, backed him, up van Geneugden saying has the highest qualification of Uefa Professional Licence, is a certified coaches\u2019 trainer and is tactically sound.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national team is like a club. He has worked for big clubs saving some from relegation and helping others earn promotion, so what can stop him from delivering the goods with the national team?,\u201d Nyamilandu insisted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to go to the World Cup in the next 10 years and the journey must start now. For us to go to the World Cup, we must lay a strong base, so we are now going to the under-17 and under-20 because he will be the head of the junior team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Newly appointed Malawi National Football Team Coach, Ronny van Geneugden, has branded questions about his lack of international football experience as mere talk from negative minds. The 48-year-old is working for the first time in Africa and as a national team coach. He, however, played for top clubs back home in Belgium before venturing into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44142","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\/44142","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=44142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44168,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44142\/revisions\/44168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}