Football Association of Malawi (Fam) President Fleetwood Haiya has said his administration will strive to build a strong strategic alliance with their Japanese counterparts in the drive to transform Malawi football.
Haiya made the remarks on Wednesday when he met Japanese ambassador to Malawi Youichi Oya who paid a courtesy call at Fam’s headquarters in Chiwembe Township, Blantyre.
The visit was a response to Fam’s efforts in courting international partners following meetings with several embassies last year.
Haiya thanked Oya for his historic visit to Mpira Village which he said demonstrates Japan’s will and commitment to partner Fam in football development.
“It is indeed a good moment for us to host you here. Our strategic plan which we launched last year emphasizes on the importance of forming strategic alliances with foreign FAs through their embassies. As one way of achieving that, we visited a number of embassies and sold our vision on transforming Malawi football.
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“We are happy that our efforts have started bearing fruits with this visit which will open for more doors for more collaboration with Japanese football institutions. We have discussed a number of areas of collaboration like exchange visits for our technical personnel, as well as arranging matches between our different national teams,” he said.
Oya, who donated footballs to Fam on behalf of Japan’s FA, said they are excited to build a strategic working relationship with Malawi.
“There is already a good working relationship between Malawi and Japan on football development. Fam has a volunteer from Japan International Cooperation Agency who is attached to the technical department. We have also seen that players from the two countries have been playing in our leagues.
“Our player Nakamura Genki played in Malawi, while Malawian Jabulani Linje played in the J-League. We can build from that to make great strides for more collaboration from the referees, coaches, national teams and players so that we develop the game of football in Malawi as we have done in Japan,” he said.
