It appears no football team from Malawi\u2014 whether club, national team or social side\u2014is good enough for any international competition\/game which Fifa recognises and sanctions.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s football team exited the group stages of the 2017 Cosafa Championship in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe last year.<\/p>\n
The under-20 national football team also crashed out of the group stages of the Cosafa Junior Championship in Kitwe, Zambia last December.<\/p>\n
The journey for Masters Security and Be Forward Wanderers, too, in the Confederation of African Football Cup and Champions League ended before it even started in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, respectively.<\/p>\n
Imagine, barely a week into the Cosafa Cup which took place in South Africa from May 27 to June 9, the Flames were on their way back home to watch the rest of the proceedings as spectators.<\/p>\n
When Zimbabwe\u2019s Warriors won the Cosafa Cup for an unprecedented sixth time after seeing off arch-rivals Zambia 4-2 in the final at New Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, South Africa, most Flames players had even forgotten that they participated in the Cosafa Cup.<\/p>\n
Come to imagine that the Flames cannot even win a Cosafa Cup when Namibia\u2019s Brave Warriors are able to do it.<\/p>\n
The only exception can be Malawi under-17 national football team which won Cosafa Cup bronze medals in 2016 and 2017, thanks to the wise and dynamic leadership of Derklerk Msakakuona.<\/p>\n
But the rate at which senior national team coaches are invading Msakakuona\u2019s technical bench, trying to align themselves to his relative success, do not be surprised if the kids return from Mauritius empty-handed next month.<\/p>\n
For this reason, maybe a request can be pushed to the in-tray of Gianni Infantino at Fifa House in Switzerland to seriously, as a matter of urgency, consider introducing a completion for certified failures such as Flames.<\/p>\n
The competition will be competed for by national football teams that are so good at either missing out on qualification or exiting competitions prematurely.<\/p>\n
These are teams that are so good at talking football and following proceedings from the discomfort of their chairs.<\/p>\n
So, where is Malawi football getting it all wrong? It is an obvious question but relevant one all the same.<\/p>\n
The saddest part is that even a kid knows why the Flames have become a laughing stock of international football.<\/p>\n
You can talk about facilities, poor incentives, age-cheating, lack of visionary leadership\u2014at all levels\u2014poor governance but shockingly as a country no one is doing anything about it. Football nature will sort out itself.<\/p>\n
The nation is producing more talented bottle-store footballers, coaches, fans and pundits and none on the actual field of play.<\/p>\n
Malawi has stopped doing anything to do with football. We are all talking more football and playing less football.<\/p>\n
The nation has lost meaning of what national football team business is all about. We do not even know what it takes for one to be a national team player.<\/p>\n
Everyone can play for the national team today be dropped tomorrow, be recalled after two years and be dropped again.<\/p>\n
Any coach can manage the Flames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It appears no football team from Malawi\u2014 whether club, national team or social side\u2014is good enough for any international competition\/game which Fifa recognises and sanctions. The women\u2019s football team exited the group stages of the 2017 Cosafa Championship in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe last year. The under-20 national football team also crashed out of the group stages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66974","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\/66974","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=66974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66975,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66974\/revisions\/66975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}