Council gives FAM homework
Malawi National Council of Sports has sent FAM back to the drawing board on the process of recruiting the next Flames coach.
Football Association of Malawi (FAM) approached Sports Council last week to commence the recruitment process, but the Council’s executive secretary George Jana said the request was not detailed.
“We discussed the issue, but we sent them back to recast because other than expressing the wish, their initial request was blank.
“It [the request] was not detailed, so we have told them what to do and they are working on that,” he said.
FAM president Walter Nyamilandu confirmed having set the ball rolling on the matter by courting government through the Council.
“It is an on-going process, but we are hoping to have the new coach in place by June end.
“It will be necessary to have the coach before the joint 2021 Africa Cup of Nations [Afcon)]and 2022 World Cup qualifiers whose preliminary matches start in August this year,” he said.
The FAM president said they intend to normalise the situation whereby Malawi Government should take full responsibility of paying the coach whether local or expatriate”.
The position of Flames coach fell vacant on April 1 following the expiry of Ronny van Geneugden’s (RVG) two-year contract on April 1.
RVG’s predecessor Ernest Mtawali and his former assistant coach Nsanzurwimo Ramadhan were on government pay roll.
The Belgian tactician has since been replaced by Under-23 national coach Meke Mwase in an interim capacity.
At its executive committee meeting held on April 5 in Salima, FAM executive committee resolved not to renew RVG’s contract on the basis of poor performance that saw him register only two wins out of 21 matches.
In his reaction, RVG who has since returned to his native Belgium, said Malawi should critically look at the issue of changing coaches frequently.
“If you are changing coaches every year or you have 10 coaches in the last 10 years, [you ask yourself] what is the the philosophy, the programme, the development programme, the foundation? How did you work in these 10 years? Because when you change a coach every year, you must have somebody else who is responsible for these development programmes or for this rate wire.
“I must be honest that I did not get a straight answer, so at that time I had two options: Either I became a popular coach who is a puppet by making popular decisions [to please some quarters] or I said to my self, if there are no development programmes and the Fifa boss
[president]wants to increase the number of teams at the World Cup to 48 in future, then it means more places for African countries.
“So, we had to start laying the foundations and development programmes for the future by rebuilding from Under-17 and Under-20,” he said.
RVG also blamed the offices of FAM technical director and technical subcommittee for not supporting him. n
