Experts tip FAM on football academies

Football experts in the country have urged FAM to regulate operations of soccer academies if their contributions to youth football development is to be meaningful.

Former Flames coach Yasin Osman fears that if the Football Association of Malawi (FAM) is not careful with the handling of the academy phenomenon, local football standards will not achieve the desired results.

“FAM needs to have a uniform syllabus to be followed by the academies so that we should not lose direction. Otherwise, if everyone is left to do things their own way, it will be meaningless,” said Osman.

While concurring with Osman, former FAM chief executive officer (CEO) Charles Nyirenda, said FAM also needs an accreditation committee to monitor operations of the academies.

In countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe, academies operate under specific guidelines for coaching philosophy, training regime, standard equipment and conventional education needs to ensure that the youngsters are not exploited. Surestream is one of the countries few academies that have players attached to secondary schools.

Soccer legend Lawrence Waya told Weekend Nation on Wednesday that although he approached FAM before registering his football academy in Mzuzu early this year, the association did not show interest to guide him on how to run it.

“They only gave me a go-ahead to train the children at Mzuzu Stadium at a fee. There was no talk about the development strategy. I do not mind that as long as I help to nurture future football stars in the country in accordance with my knowledge and experience as coach,” said the B-coaching licence holder.

The former Flames and Bata Bullets striker said although he lacks enough resources for the 49 youngsters he has enrolled into his academy, he will strive to assist them to have a career in football.

Trevor Kajawa, who founded Kangaroo Football Academy in Blantyre, agreed with Waya that they are not aware of FAM’s grass-roots football development strategy. But he said FAM needs to quickly embrace the academies by introducing policies that can help to ensure that only qualified individuals and organisations get into the system.

Fully fledged academies generate income through grooming and selling of players to top clubs.

In West Africa, most of Cote d’Ivoire stars in the English Premier League such as Kolo and Yaya Toure went through such development stages. However, Kajawa lamented that Malawi’s difficult economic climate does not afford academy owners in the country to train the youngsters the way rich footballing nations do.

According to Fifa regulations, a football academy needs to be an independent legal entity, whose primary objective is to provide players with long-term training through the provision of necessary training facilities and infrastructure.

The issue of local football clubs owning academies to nurture players and avoid transfer wrangles with their counterparts was highlighted as one essential area that needs to be worked on for Malawi to implement the 2008 Lilongwe Declaration.

While analysts believe it is FAM’s duty to produce football academy guidelines, the association’s chief executive officer, Suzgo Nyirenda, feels it it should be the other way round.

“Of course, there is no clear-cut procedure on how these academies should conduct their activities and we cannot stop anybody from establishing one,” said Nyirenda.

He added that academies are complementing FAM’s efforts to nurture talent.

“But my advice is that they should come to us to seek expertise from us on how they should do their business,” said Nyirenda.