The Football Association of Malawi will on Saturday launch the U14 and U16 Girls and Boys Leagues at Mpira Stadium in Blantyre.
The Girls leagues fall under the FIFA League Development, one of the three programmes that FAM applied under the FIFA Women’s Football Development Programme.
The other two are the FIFA Women’s Football Campaign which was conducted in June and the Club Licensing Program which will be effected in the 2023 FAM Women’s Regional Leagues.
FAM Technical Director Benjamin Kumwenda said the leagues aim at enhancing player development pathways for both boys and girls.
“This is the first time that we are having the girls leagues of these ages in the country. We applied for this programme to specifically develop our Women football so that we have a proper player development pathway for our girls.
“In addition to that, we want to bring more girls to play football because we have very few girls who are in the game.
“For U14, our target is teams who are within the three cities (Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu) because we don’t want the girls to travel long distances since they are young while the for U16, we will allow teams who are not in the cities but are capable of participating to take part in the three U16 regional Leagues. We want to develop more players for the U17 and U20 National teams and then the Scorchers,” said Kumwenda.
The FAM TD added that the Girls Leagues will be officially launched together with Boys Leagues which are sponsored by FAM.
The boys Leagues kicked off last month.
“For the boys, the leagues are being played in 18 districts and the purpose is the same as that of the girls leagues, we want the boys to play in structured football from a younger age,” said Kumwenda.
During the launch, Eastern Elephants will face Ndirande Soccer Giants in the U14 Girls match while Alphasoft will meet Young Snipers in the Boys match.
For U16 Girls, Maggie Chombo Academy will face Ntopwa while Mbayani United will face Golden Boys in the U16 Boys Match.
FAM President Walter Nyamilandu will preside over the launch.
