The Football Association of Malawi says it will set CAF B Coaching License as minimum requirement for coaches in the newly introduced National First Division League.
FAM president Fleetwood Haiya disclosed this on Wednesday afternoon when he officially closed a CAF B coaching course at Mpira Stadium in Blantyre.
Haiya assured the coaches that FAM will create more opportunities for highly qualified coaches starting with the NFD which will become the second-tier league from next season.
He urged the coaches to seek more knowledge if they are to become good coaches.
“As FAM, we are on a mission to transform the game and one way to achieve that is to have a robust technical development. This can only happen if we have well-trained coaches, hence having the CAF B Coaching Course on top of the Video Analysis that we had earlier this year.
“The National Division League that we are introducing next year will have CAF B Coaching Licence as a minimum requirement for coaches, so we expect most of you coaches to get teams in that league.
“However, just being in class and learning is not enough and if your are to be the best at regional, continental and even world level you need to invest more in knowledge because football is evolving every day.
“Modern day coaching is more demanding and needs more analysis so coaches need to move with trends and be flexible enough to learn and know all aspects of the game by searching online,” Haiya challenged the coaches.
Haiya has since encouraged all the participants to affiliate with the National Football Coaches Association ( NCFCA) saying FAM will only recognize members of the Coaching body.
NFCA Chairperson Aubrey Nankhuni hailed FAM for organising the course saying the association will have more coaches who can be recommended for national duties.
“NFCA is grateful to FAM for the course because we had gaps in the numbers of qualified coaches but after this course the struggle to recommend coaches will no longer be there.
“To the coaches who have gone through the course, we believe that they are going to scout for promising players and develop them using modern coaching technics so that we have good players for the national team,” he said.
Speaking on behalf of the participants, Dida Zingwangwa of Zingwangwa United said the knowledge they have learnt during the course will help improve coaching standards in the country.
“The knowledge we have learnt during our course is very rich and we are leaving here well-equipped and better prepared to elevate football in the country. We will make sure that we utilise this knowledge by producing better players,” he said.
During the course the coaches went through technical and tactical aspects of the game, Laws of the game and Sports Medicine.
FAM Technical Director Benjamin Kumwenda, CAF Coaches Instructor Captain John Kapita Rtd were facilitating the course alongside Maxwell Mtonga and Levison Mwale who took the coaches through Laws of the game and Sports Medicine respectively.
