FAM dates leagues on restart plan

FAM, through its Covid-19 task force, will engage its affiliates to plan on how they can resume their respective leagues in the wake of Covid-19 increased cases.

The leagues include regional, women’s, youth and beach soccer.

This was resolved during the Football Association of Malawi’s (FAM) executive committee meeting held in Mangochi on Saturday.

A statement issued by the association partly reads: “The [executive] committee resolved that the FAM Covid-19 Task Force should engage member associations responsible for regional leagues, youth, women’s football and beach soccer to review the Football Restart Plan for the respective leagues.

“This follows Malawi Government’s decision to limit public gatherings to 100 people which has affected the earlier plans to restart all other leagues by January 11 2021.”

In an interview yesterday, FAM Covid-19 Task Force chairperson Chimango Munthali said the focus is on coming up with a model that will ensure that the games resume “as soon as possible while not compromising the lives of the players and other stakeholders”.

He said: “Although we find ourselves in a tight spot due to the revised restrictions, we need to find alternatives and come up with a detailed plan.

“So, we will be having consultative sessions with member associations to brainstorm on how we can resume while restricting gatherings to 100 people.

“We’ll also be looking at issues like formats and the plans we can put in place to reduce contamination,” he said.

Last week, FAM competitions and communications director Gomezgani Zakazaka admitted that with the revised restrictions, it will be a challenge to prevent people from watching regional league games as the matches are played at open community grounds and they attract huge crowds.

“For Super League games, it is easy to reinforce this restriction because the games are played in stadiums where it is easy to manage,” he said.