Former Malawi national football team legendary player and coach, Kinnah Phiri, has opted to walk out of his contract with Botswana Premier League side, Mochudi Centre Chiefs, in favour of taking up a government job.<\/p>\n
Kinnah signed a two-year contract with Chiefs late last year but returned home barely weeks after taking up the post, accusing the club of breach of contract.<\/p>\n
He also left Tanzania\u2019s Mbeya City FC, claiming that the club was failing to pay him.<\/p>\n
In an interview Sunday from his Mzuzu base, Kinnah said he was no longer interested in going back to Botswana as there are arrangements to have him employed as Director of Football in the Ministry of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development.<\/p>\n
Kinnah said he expects to take up the post on July 1 and does not want to work outside the country anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have worked in South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Botswana and I believe this is the time to help my own country. We have been in talks with government for some time and I am looking forward to taking up the post,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kinnah said he had agreed with Chiefs that, since the club had no sponsorship, he was free to leave should he find another job.<\/p>\n
He insisted that besides the club\u2019s financial challenges, there are no major problems between the two parties despite the fact that he has been home for several months now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am free to return to Chiefs anytime as the club has provided air tickets for me and my wife. But I just want to work for my own country. I have been out of the country for too long and I feel it is time to settle down in my own country,\u201d Kinnah said.<\/p>\n
He said, as director of football in the ministry, he intends to set up structures to help in reviving the game across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will make sure that the structures which were there in those days should come back. We had vibrant district and regional sports offices which helped in unearthing talent in those days. That will be my first task,\u201d Kinnah said.<\/p>\n
Director of Sports in the ministry, Jameson Ndalama, confirmed the development, but said the matter was yet to be concluded.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might be aware that the government issued a circular notifying all ministries and departments that recruitments and promotions had been frozen. So we will be consulting on the way forward. But, for now, there is nothing [on the table]. We discussed it and government will direct us on the way forward,\u201d Ndalama said.<\/p>\n
Football Association of Malawi President Walter Nyamilandu and his General Secretary Alfred Gunda could not be reached for comment as their phones were not available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Malawi national football team legendary player and coach, Kinnah Phiri, has opted to walk out of his contract with Botswana Premier League side, Mochudi Centre Chiefs, in favour of taking up a government job. Kinnah signed a two-year contract with Chiefs late last year but returned home barely weeks after taking up the post, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66644","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\/66644","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=66644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66648,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66644\/revisions\/66648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}