Nine Cosafa tourneys lined up for this year

Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) has lined up nine tournaments in its 2024 competitions calendar.

The regional football governing body’s calendar shows that it will hold the competitions that will be across multiple age-groups as well as the flagship Cosafa Cup and Cosafa Women’s Championship.

The calendar starts with the Cosafa Beach Soccer tournament to be held from March 17 to 23 in Durban, South Africa.

Thereafter the Cosafa Under-20 Women’s Championship will follow from April 17 to 28 at a venue yet to be announced

The flagship Cosafa Cup is pencilled for May 22 to June 2 also at a venue also yet to be announced.

The better part of June, July as well as early August is reserved for the 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifiers, according to the calendar.

The region’s only women’s football club competition, the Cosafa Women’s Champions League, which is a qualifier for the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Women’s Championship, will be held from August 16 to 24 in Durban.

The Cosafa Under-20 boys, which was not held last year, returns this year from September 11 to 22 and it will also be a qualifier for the CAF Under-20.

Cosafa will then hold the CAF Schools Championship qualifiers from October 4 to 7.

The Cosafa Women’s Championship will be held from October 21 to 31 in  Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Malawi Women’s National Football  Team, the Scorchers, who won the competition last year, are expected to defend the title.

This year, Cosafa plans to hold both Cosafa Under-17 girls and boys tournaments simultaneously from December 6 to 15.

Both competitions are returning after Cosafa failed to hold them last year.

Meanwhile, Football Association of Malawi (FAM) competitions and communications director Gomezgani Zakazaka said the association will determine which competitions Malawi will participate in.

He said: “The calendar has just been communicated so we will have to evaluate the competitions and see which ones we will participate in as we also have to consider funding.”

However, the Malawi Beach Soccer National Team is already in camp in preparation for the beach soccer tournament after missing last year’s competition.

Zakazaka said the FAM executive committee already approved Malawi’s participation in the tournament.

“For beach soccer, we got the invitation sometime back, so the executive committee approved,” he said.

Beach Soccer Malawi chairperson Gift Chimbalanga thanked FAM for keeping its promise to ensure the Malawi beach soccer national team participate sin all competitions.