Abel Mwakilama, the gem of a striker on whose tender shoulders Malawi football placed hope on, died yesterday in Portugal, his Mozambique-based Manager, Venancio Patrick, has confirmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got sick the day before yesterday [Wednesday] and he complained of headache. At 8 pm, yesterday [Thursday], he was taken to hospital and it was concluded that he was suffering from celebral malaria.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoctors tried their best and even transferred him to one of the biggest hospitals in Portugal, but he died. It happened so fast. He never complained of malaria but I suspect that he contracted it when he came to Malawi two weeks ago [to feature for the under-20 national team]. There is no malaria in Europe and I guess, he did not go for a check up,\u201d Patrick said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) General Secretary, Alfred Gunda, Friday confirmed the death of the 18-year-old player who was plying his trade with Portuguese fourth-tier league side, Sporting Clube de Esmoriz.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is so shocking\u2026so sad. Let me verify with his agent and club. I have talked to Richard Mbulu [another Portugal-based Malawian striker] and he has also confirmed this,\u201d Gunda said, his voice chocking with emotions.<\/p>\n
Fam had earlier suggested that Mwakilama failed to report for tomorrow\u2019s Junior Flames\u2019 Africa Cup of Nations preliminary round second-leg match in Swaziland because he was pre-occupied.<\/p>\n
Mwakilama single-handedly steered Chitipa United to the TNM Super League in 2017 after scoring over 30 goals in the Premier Division campaign for 2016.<\/p>\n
He also represented the Junior Flames at the 2016 Cosafa Championship in South Africa. In Portugal, he scored seven goals in five games for Esmoriz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Abel Mwakilama, the gem of a striker on whose tender shoulders Malawi football placed hope on, died yesterday in Portugal, his Mozambique-based Manager, Venancio Patrick, has confirmed. \u201cHe got sick the day before yesterday [Wednesday] and he complained of headache. At 8 pm, yesterday [Thursday], he was taken to hospital and it was concluded that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64252","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\/64252","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=64252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64256,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64252\/revisions\/64256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}