Football Association of Malawi (FAM) says 15 TNM Super League teams that initially failed the club licensing test, have now made the grade, two months after the 2024 season kicked off.
FCB Nyasa Bullets stood proudly as the only team that was licensed after meeting all the six licensing criteria at the start of the season in April.
For the first time since club licensing was introduced in 2015, the 15 teams were still allowed to start the season while processing eligibility checks.
In an interview on Tuesday, FAM club licensing and compliance manager Casper Jangale said the association’s First Instant Body (FIB) has approved licensing of the teams after meeting the requirements.
“The FIB met at the weekend and they were satisfied after going through the documents submitted by teams,” he said.
Jangale said the teams risked being disqualified from any competition if they failed to finalise the process.
On why the teams were allowed to start playing without licences following the phasing out of provisional licences by Confederation of African Football (CAF) last year, he said: “Provisional licences were indeed phased out. In fact, initially the FIB wanted to issue provisional licences, but I had to direct them not to as it would have been against the new rules.
“The reason the 15 teams were given the benefit of the doubt was because there were just a few outstanding issues they needed to address.
“So, instead of just giving them licenses for the sake of covering up, we thought it wise to withhold the licenses until the issues were resolved.”
Jangale said the other reason was the timing of the issuance of the licences.
He said: “The period was just too short as the determination was made a day before the start of the league which was not ideal as clubs are supposed to have ample time to finalise the process, including an opportunity to appeal.”
Newly-promoted Creck Sporting Club board chairperson Muhammad Seleman said the major challenges they faced “were that the processes were too many to be completed within a short period”.
He said: “There were lots of documents to be submitted , including copies of contracts for players and coaches, but all the same we finalised everything.”
The criteria of club licensing includes sporting, infrastructure, administration, legal, finance and commercialisation.
