The Confederation of African Football (Caf) inspector, Mohamed Yusuf, of Kenya is expected to inspect Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe on Friday.<\/p>\n
The inspector will check if the Chinese government-funded venue is fit for international matches\u2014signalling the death of international matches in the Southern Region.<\/p>\n
The Football Association of Malawi (Fam) requested Caf to inspect the stadium ahead of the African Nations Championship (Chan) and Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifiers.<\/p>\n
Fam General Secretary, Alfred Gunda, did not elaborate whether the Flames will no longer use Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre for Caf and Fifa matches once BNS is certified fit.<\/p>\n
Gunda yesterday said the Caf inspector would, among others, check the state of the pitch, safety and hygiene issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is vital to point out that the outcome of the inspection will determine our future capability and capacity to successfully host Caf-sanctioned matches,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Fam, we have our own Caf inspector but you cannot inspect it yourself. We are hopeful for the better that our stadium will be certified fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is very likely that BNS will pass the test as International Federation of Athletics Federation recently approved the 45,000-seater stadium for international races.<\/p>\n
The government opened the Lilongwe stadium in January. BNS has, so far, hosted the Luso Bus Ipite Bonanza, Wafawafa Big Four Bonanza and a friendly between Malawi Under-23 National Team and Guangzhou R&F of China.<\/p>\n
If the stadium is certified fit, the Flames will host Madagascar in the return preliminary round match for Chan at the end of this month.<\/p>\n
Malawi, who will travel to Madagascar on April 22 for the first leg of the Chan qualifiers, will also host Morocco and Cameroon from June in the Afcon group stage matches.<\/p>\n
The Flames have, since the country attained self-rule, played their high profile matches at Kamuzu Stadium, which has since been condemned with some terraces cordoned off.<\/p>\n
Kamuzu Stadium Manager, Ambilike Mwaungulu, yesterday, however, refused to speculate if the facility has been ruled out for international matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn normal cases, the football authorities do write us in advance, say a month before an international match, notifying us of an event. But so far, no football authority has informed us,\u201d Mwaungulu explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Confederation of African Football (Caf) inspector, Mohamed Yusuf, of Kenya is expected to inspect Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe on Friday. The inspector will check if the Chinese government-funded venue is fit for international matches\u2014signalling the death of international matches in the Southern Region. The Football Association of Malawi (Fam) requested Caf to inspect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44280","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\/44280","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=44280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44307,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44280\/revisions\/44307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}