Football Association of Malawi (FAM) president Fleetwood Haiya has challenged upcoming referees to invest in formal education as they seek to gain highest refereeing badges.
He said this during the closing ceremony of the five-day Young Talent Referees Course that attracted 35 up-and-coming referees from Monday at the Mpira Village in Blantyre.
“We lost the opportunity of training these young referees and this created a big gap in football officiation. A lot has changed in the modern game yet we hardly looked at developing a new crop of young referees to grow along with the times,” Haiya said.
The FAM president believes that referees are at the pinnacle of football development because one cannot talk about investing in grassroots without talking about the referees.
“Our Vision in the transformative agenda requires us to improve in the way we organise, administer, develop and control the game. Football cannot develop without the referees and we are talking of the young referees.
“Previously, we forgot about investing grassroots football, whose base is having good referees that should grow with the game. In my administration, we want to focus much on the grassroots, starting with the referees, the coaches and then the players.”
“We are going to monitor them. We believe that with this training, we should soon have referees that will be tasked to officiate at big international competition such as the African Cup of Nations (Afcon) and the Fifa World Cup.”
The course, which started on Monday, aims at creating a pool of talented and qualified referees in the country.
Representative of the trainees Edda Kaludzu said they are ready to prove to the world that they now qualify as well-trained referees.
National Football Referees Association chairperson Patrick Kapanga hailed FAM for considering to train the young referees.
Fifa instructor Ali Muhammad from Somalia and Malawian Fifa referees’ fitness instructor Mark Mzengo facilitated the course with support from some local instructors including Duncan Lengani, Boswell Msangu, Mabvuto Msimuko and Bernadettar Kwimbira.
