Failure to record games affecting local football

Fifty-one years after independence, football authorities in the country, including Football Association of Malawi (FAM), Super League of Malawi (Sulom), National Referees Committee (NRC) and clubs, have no capacity to record local games, Nation on Sunday has learnt.

Lack of recordings of football matches has resulted in challenges, not only on the technical side but also on marketing, refereeing and security.

Sulom president Innocent Bottoman, acknowledged that they do not have the capacity to record matches and that this was affecting efforts to market the game.

“In this age and time without motion documentation you cannot expect to sell the game well. We need to have records of the matches if our game is to grow. It is the situation in all the leagues that are thriving well,” said Bottoman.

He said in the near future Sulom would have a media team to record and document matches.

“The importance of having a media team will override costs of acquiring cameras and employing a media team. The outcome will be far much profitable. As Sulom, we are also dreaming in colour and we believe we can convince TNM to partner us and the project would create a bigger platform in which to sell their brand,” said Bottoman. His general secretary Williams Banda also agreed with the views.

“Motion documentation is very important and we cannot over emphasize its importance but we are way back in terms of finding the finances to own media equipment.

“Fifa is working hard to ensure technology is installed at match venues through associations. We believe we will be able to document that in the near future,” he said.

Referee instructor Verson Lwanja, who is in FAM’s referees subcommittee, said most of the problems relating to referees performance in the country would be mitigated if football matches were captured on video.

“In this way, we could improve greatly on performance of referees. It is my appeal that FAM would come up with media team to be capturing matches on videos,” said Lwanja.

Silver Strikers feel that with the global advancement of technology, the country should be able to record matches.

“Apart from creating a market, it is also good for security to have matches captured on videos. After the game, it can be used to trace perpetrators of violence.

“Another advantage is the coaches will be able to analyse mistakes by watching the replay of the matches with layers,” said Silver general secretary Fred Kalonga. n