Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Technical and Youth Subcommittee has maintained De Klerk Msakakuona as Malawi Under 17 national team coach ahead of next month\u2019s Cosafa Youth Championship in Mauritius.<\/p>\n
The former Blue Eagles mentor will be assisted by Wizards Technical Director, Peter Mponda, whereas Nyasa Big Bullets Reserves coach, Enos Chatama, has been re-assigned to the team as team manager from the Under 20 side where he was assistant coach.<\/p>\n
Victor Jobo is the teams\u2019 physiotherapist with Heathwin Mkumbaleza being engaged as goalkeeper coach.<\/p>\n
Ironically, both Msakakuona and Mponda are part of the senior Flames technical set-up after being named assistant coaches alongside Gerald Phiri Senior.<\/p>\n
The development means Tione Mhone and Mike Banda have been left out of the team\u2019s set up this time.<\/p>\n
Mhone was assistant coach while Banda was team manager when the junior Flames finished third in Mauritius last year.<\/p>\n
Fam Vice President, James Mwenda, confirmed the new panel, saying Msakakuona was maintained following the teams\u2019 outstanding display in last year\u2019s tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel we should give him more time to build on last year\u2019s success. The move will provide continuity as well,\u201d Mwenda said.<\/p>\n
He also stated that Fam would work jointly with different stakeholders to identify players for the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have several stakeholders, including the National Youth Football Association, that we have earmarked to help in identifying the right players for us to build a strong team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Fam Technical Director, John Kaputa, said there are arrangements to select the team from various developmental structures including the Fifa- Fam Under-16 Regional Leagues and Malawi Schools Sports Association (Massa) competitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cScouts have been on the ground selecting exciting talent from the Fifa-Fam Under-16 Regional Leagues. Each region will be required to form a select side to compete during the national trials to be held at Chiwembe Technical Centre on June 24 and 25. Others will be selected from the team that won bronze during last year\u2019s tournament,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the technical panel will also consider Under-15 players who were part of Massa\u2019s team that competed in a recent tournament in South Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have cast our net wider to consider all eligible players from Nsanje to Chitipa. The successful players will also undergo an MRI scan to validate their ages. We do not want to be caught in issues to do with age-cheating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The final selection of the players will be done through a two-day national selection tournament.<\/p>\n
The junior Flames have been drawn against the hosts Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Botswana in group A whereas group B is made up of South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Madagascar.<\/p>\n
Champions Namibia have opted not to compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Technical and Youth Subcommittee has maintained De Klerk Msakakuona as Malawi Under 17 national team coach ahead of next month\u2019s Cosafa Youth Championship in Mauritius. The former Blue Eagles mentor will be assisted by Wizards Technical Director, Peter Mponda, whereas Nyasa Big Bullets Reserves coach, Enos Chatama, has been re-assigned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48853","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\/48853","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=48853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48858,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48853\/revisions\/48858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}