Former Be Forward Wanderers and Blantyre United striker Maxwell Chirwa is seeing out the remaining years of his football career in the United States, where he is playing for a lower league amateur team.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Chirwa, whose national team career ended prematurely after a horrific leg injury in 2003, now plays as a defender for Yemen Elite in New York.<\/p>\n
Chirwa helped the team, which campaigns in the Premier Division of the Buffalo & District Soccer League, win Tehel Cup last week.<\/p>\n
Yemen defeated Buffalo United Soccer Stars on post-match penalties, according to Buffalo <\/em>newspaper reporter Ben Tsujimoto.<\/p>\n The reporter, in an e-mailed response to The Daily Times<\/em>\u2019 questionnaire, said Yemen Elite a top amateur men\u2019s team in Buffalo, New York.<\/p>\n Across all tiers, the league comprises 80 teams, but the Premier Division has 12 teams.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Yemen Elite avoided relegation in league play, they really shone in the Tehel Cup, which is a single-elimination tournament held each year among teams in the top three divisions.<\/p>\n \u201cChirwa plays an important role, even if he flies a little under the radar and doesn\u2019t stand out on the statistics sheet. He is capable of playing anywhere along the back line, and he is quick, composed and a solid ball-winner. He is the definition of a steady defender, and did well to help stave off many of Buffalo United Soccer Stars\u2019 attacks in the title game,\u201d Tsujimoto said.<\/p>\n Chirwa, who did not realise his potential due to the injury, was part of a batch of talented players Alex Masanjala and Manfred Hoener groomed at the turn of the century.<\/p>\n Chirwa, who posted on his Face-book page his picture celebrating with the trophy, left for America in 2013 to pursue studies.<\/p>\n The player could not be reached for a comment yesterday but internet reports show that he also played for another lower league American side, Elnwood Saints, in 2015.<\/p>\n The group of players, that were later to form the backbone of Malawi under-20 and under-17 national football teams, included Esau Kanyenda, Kachibowo Malunga, Swadick Sanudi, Dan Chitsulo, Patrick Mangani, Maupo Msowoya, Simeon Kapuza, Allan Kamanga, James Kaniche, Peter Mponda and Andrew Chikhosi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Be Forward Wanderers and Blantyre United striker Maxwell Chirwa is seeing out the remaining years of his football career in the United States, where he is playing for a lower league amateur team. Interestingly, Chirwa, whose national team career ended prematurely after a horrific leg injury in 2003, now plays as a defender for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52200","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\/52200","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=52200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52206,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52200\/revisions\/52206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}