Wanderers, Masters fail to register all players

Tom Sangala January 2, 2018

439 1 minute read

Be Forward Wanderers and Masters Security FC failed to register their full squads with the Confederation of African Football (Caf) by Sunday’s mid-night deadline, ahead of their participation in the Champions League and Confederation Cup, respectively.
However, the clubs have differed with Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Transfer Matching System Manager, Casper Jangale, on what caused the failure to register all the players.
Jangale yesterday claimed that the clubs started the registration process late on Sunday; hence, it was impossible to enter all the players’ data into Caf’s system before the deadline.
“It is true that both clubs made the submissions yesterday [Sunday] and by mid-night, we had registered 22 players out of 27 for Wanderers and 15 for Masters out of 25. It takes time to submit, online, a medical report for each player, upload pictures, send their playing positions, citizenship, jersey number and all the necessary information,” Jangale said.
He said both clubs must be prepared to pay penalties to register the remaining players in the next two windows, as they had all the time to start the process.
But Wanderers General Secretary, Mike Butao, insisted that both clubs submitted their squads to Fam in time.
“The problem was at Fam. They had network problems, so my assumption is that they communicated to Caf about the challenges they encountered. I do not expect that [paying the fees] because we submitted all the information before the deadline,” Butao said.
Wanderers date AS Vita of the Democratic Republic of Congo whereas Masters take on Petro du Luanda of Angola. Both competitions kick off next month.
There are two more windows for registering the players, but it comes at a heavy cost.
The first window runs from January 1 to 15 2017 whereas the final grace period is from January 16 to 31, according to www. cafonline.com.
In the first window, registering a player costs K188,000 ($250), translating to K940,000 for Wanderers’ five players whereas Masters might pay K1.8 million to register the remaining 10 footballers.
Caf website states that each club wishing to register a player must submit a “list of the names of a maximum of 30 players and their local licence numbers validated by the national association.”
“A complete list of a maximum of 30 players, along with the number of their licences, validated by their national associations, must be sent…on the online system or sent to Caf Secretariat in case of using the offline system.
“This list must be registered or submitted to Caf secretariat (in case of using the offline system) before the 31st of December of the year preceding the competition.
“It can be amended until the 15th January of the year of the competition, but after the 15th January the list becomes final and no new players can be added nor replaced up to the end of the competition, except in the case contemplated in the above para 3, 5 and the below para 8,” reads article V of Caf’s rules and regulations.