Spare our young referees
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) has expressed concern with the tendency of some football club officials and supporters who are harassing young referees officiating Under-16 league games.
Fam Youth Development Officer, James Sangala, told the local press this week that these stakeholders are putting unnecessary pressure on the young referees.
It should be appreciated that the idea of having these young referees officiating the Under-16 games is to help them grow with the game.
It is unfortunate that there are some officials with lopsided thinking and do not want to appreciate this fact.
The Under-16 is a development league and results do not count. All what Fam wants is to develop the talent of these youngsters; I mean both the referees and the players.
It is, therefore, unfortunate to expose these youngsters to these torturous conditions.
This just confirms that at this day and age we have people who have questionable pedigree in football administration.
Such fiery temper creates a volatile working environment and this will eventually discourage them from officiating games.
The rotten attitude displayed by some of these junior teams’ officials is a classic exhibition of how not to behave at a football match.
Mostly, such attitudes are displayed by those people who cannot make big impression even if the games are officiated by senior competent referees.
It is understandable that these referees lack experience, therefore any reasonable person can appreciate that they are bound to make mistakes.
Blaming such young referees for their mistake is a missing a big plot.
Fam needs to take stringent action against these perpetrators. These are bad apples that need to be pruned from grassroots football.
These young referees might have got some decisions wrong, which can happen to any referee, but criticising and harassing them is unfortunate.
These reckless administrators must know that when building a team you start from the grassroots. You can mark my words, in the near future these will be our star referees.
All what people need is patience.
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