Malawi’s legendary top striker and former coach Kinnah Phiri has faulted Flames attackers for failing to score and win matches for the team.
Phiri made the remarks following Malawi National Football Team’s early exit from this year’s Cosafa Cup in South Africa where it failed to score in three matches.
Malawi conceded two goals in two losses and one draw to finish bottom of Group B in the regional competition with one point.
Phiri said the Kalisto Pasuwa-led technical panel is not the problem for the team’s early exit.
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“As a country, we are lacking academy graduates who understand the game better. What we saw in South Africa is that the team is not bad. All we need to do now is encourage the boys to do much better. But our major problem is that we do not have good attackers. We need offensive players who can harm the opposition.
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“The players we have in this country come to the national team having already reached the age of 20 and they struggle quite a lot to master the game. We really need to go back to schools football which used to act as academies during our days. We also need to institute more academies which can start training these players at a tender age,” Phiri said.
Former Malawi goalkeeper Patrick Chimulambe questioned the quality of the local league.
“Our league needs to be good enough to start attracting quality foreign players. This can help our national team to start producing results as local players will be learning from the foreigners. We currently do not have even five percent of the league’s players coming from other countries. Yet all our neighbours such as Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Botswana have many foreign players who are bringing stiff competition to their respective leagues. This is helping to raise the standards of their game. We just need to follow suit,” Chimulambe said.
However, Football Association of Malawi (Fam) has said it is not disappointed as the team showed elements of improvements.
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Malawi were booted out in a group that had Lesotho, Namibia and Angola.
The results saw the Flames anchoring the table with just one point, conceding twice and scoring no goal.
Fam President Fleetwood Haiya said he remains positive despite the team’s early exit from the regional competition.
Haiya said results do not really matter, insisting that people should focus on the progress that the team has registered.
He made the remarks during his speech at National Bank of Malawi Towers in Blantyre when the bank unveiled a K1.58 billion sports sponsorship.
“We did not do well in terms of results but as Fam, we are not disappointed because the team showed some elements of improvements and with the grassroots investment by National Bank, we are hopeful that Malawi football will improve for the better soon,” he said.
Malawi have never won the Cosafa Cup since its inception in 1997.
