Just in time for Caf

Nyasa Big Bullets and Silver Strikers left it late to complete player registration for the 2018 Confederation of African Football (CAF) tournaments on Saturday which was the cut-off point.

Bullets will take part in the CAF Champions League while the Central Bankers will compete in the CAF Confederation Cup.

Football Association of Malawi (FAM) transfer matching system (TMS) manager Casper Jangale said registration for Bullets players ended at around midnight and they avoided paying the $250 (about K183 250) late registration fee for each player.

“There was a bit of confusion regarding the deadline because indications were that it would go beyond Saturday, but when I went to the office later on, I got communication that we only had four hours.

“That was when we started running around to process the registration. We started with Silver and then Bullets,” he said.

Jangale said Bullets and Silver have registered 26 and 25 players, respectively, “but there is still room to register more players since the maximum is 30 players”..

“But from the lists we got, none of the two teams has registered any new player,” he said.

The FAM official also said as of yesterday, the exact date for the competitions’ draws was not clear, although the tournaments are expected to kick off next month..

He also said both teams have made a commitment to deposit $20 000 (about K14.7 million) sureties each as per the association requirement.

“In fact, Bullets have indicated that they could deposit more because they understand the importance of the surety in terms of meeting some costs such as match officials’ travel,” he said.

Bullets chief executive officer Fleetwood Haiya yesterday confirmed having completed the player registration process.

Silver Strikers chairperson Ralph Tseka said they will not rope in new faces because they want to expose their current youthful squad.

“We have enough players and our squad is quite youthful,” he said.

Earlier this year, TNM Super League champions Be Forward Wanderers took part in the Champions League while Masters Security FC participated in the Confederations Cup.

They were both booted out in the preliminary round.