Football Association of Malawi President Fleetwood Haiya says his administration is will strive to build a strong strategic alliance with their Japanese counterparts in the drive to transform Malawi football.
Haiya made the remarks on Wednesday when he met Japanese Ambassador to Malawi His Excellency Youichi Oya, who paid a courtesy call at the FAM headquarters in Blantyre.
The visit was a response to FAM’s efforts to court international parteners following meetings with a number of embassies last year.
He thanked Ambassador Oya for his historic visit to Mpira Village which he said demonstrates Japan’s will and commitment to partner FAM in football development.
“It is indeed a good moment for us to host you here. Our strategic plan which we launched last year emphasizes on the importance of forming strategic alliances with foreign FA’s through their embassies.
“As one way of achieving that we visited a number of embassies and sold our vision on transforming Malawi Football. We are happy that our efforts have started bearing fruits with this visit which will open for more doors for more collaboration with Japanese Football institutions.
“We have discussed a number of areas of collaboration like exchange visits for our technical personnel as well as arranging matches between our different national teams,” said Haiya.
Oya, who donated footballs to FAM on behalf of the Japanese FA said they are excited to build a strategic working relations with Malawi.
“There is already a good working relationship between Malawi and Japan on football development. FAM has a volunteer from Japan International Cooperation Agency who is attached to the technical department.
“We have also seen that players from the two countries have been playing in our leagues; our player Nakamura Genki played in Malawi and while Malawi Jabulani Linje played in the J-League.
“We can build from that to make great strides for more collaborations from the referees, coaches, national teams and players so that we develop the game of football in Malawi as we have done in Japan,” he said.
