Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has once again missed the target of concluding the second-tier league season along with the elite season.
While the top-flight season ended on December 14 with the Castel Challenge Cup final, the regional leagues in the South and Centre are expected to conclude their fixtures around mid-January. The North already wrapped up their season.
This will put players from the lower leagues at risk of a burnout as they will not have enough time to rest ahead of next season that kicks off in two months. It will also deny teams that will be promoted to the TNM Super League ample time for preparations.
Southern Region Football Association (SRFA) vice-general secretary Kingsley Simbeye yesterday said they tried their best to wrap up ThumbsUp League Premier Division and Betika League Division One fixtures on time, but the scarcity of match venues has been a stumbling block.
“With most of our teams in both Premier and Division One based in Blantyre, we have Kamuzu and Mpira stadiums as our main venues. However, it is not easy to access these facilities as they are also the most reliable venues for Super League, youth, women’s and national teams,” he said.
“For example, we postponed all our games last week because the two facilities were busy hosting training sessions for the Under-19 boys and girls’ national teams that are preparing for the Region 5 Youth Games. As a result, we were left with no choice but to extend the period.”
Simbeye said the best solution could be for FAM to consider arranging lower league matches as curtainraisers for Super League games.
“However, that becomes difficult because most big teams refuse to let our games being curtainraisers due to beliefs. They only give such a privilege to games involving their reserve, youth and women’s sides. We are hopeful that FAM will enforce the idea of having our games as curtainraisers next season,” he said.
Central Region Football Association (CRFA) general secretary Antonio Manda attributed the prolonged period for the Chipiku CRFA League to their bloated league.
“We have at least 24 teams in each of our Premier and Division One leagues and our system ensures that each team plays a maximum of 30 games in a season. That created congestion on our fixtures and that meant having a very long season,” he said.
Manda also said the coming in of national cup competitions meant that lower league teams that progressed had their league fixtures shifted to later dates.
Measnwhile, Manda believes that the reduction of the number of teams to 16 in regional leagues from next season could help to bring sanity in fixtures while Simbeye feels that delinking the Eastern Region from the SRFA could help to reduce congestion in his fold.
FAM competitions and communication director Gomezgani Zakazaka was not available for comment.
