Former Bafana Bafana international Mark Fish was left impressed with the great Malawi women’s football talent and has asked authorities to put in place strategies to nurture and develop young players.
Fish was speaking after presiding over the day-long girls U14 Fast Footie tournament which took place at Saint Andrews High School in Blantyre on Saturday.
The event was organised by COSAFA and Football Association of Malawi (FAM) as one of the legacy programme for the CAF Women’s Champions League COSAFA Qualifier which Malawi’s hosting.
The participating teams drawn from the FIFA/FAM U14 girl’s leagues were Fortune Soccer Academy, Eastern Elephants, Bangwe Queens, Thikide Soccer Sense, First Girls, Ndirande Soccer Giants, Ntopwa FC and Blasco FC.
“I saw fantastic goals and play, well done to the players. I saw well organised teams, it was a great day. We all enjoyed it. I am sure these players can play even up to Europe if they keep working hard,” said Fish
He said the idea behind the Fast Footie event is to make sure the game of football develops in many aspects thereby giving tough time to players and coaches to deal with situations that come during the match.
“If you see we had some situations where one team would have a numerical advantage giving pressure to the other team to handle that pressure and see how best they can adapt to it. We taught them different rules and different ways of playing the game,” he said.
Fish said he will leave Malawi a very happy person with what he saw.
“What I have seen is that we have talent in Malawi, we need to give girls an opportunity. We want to see Malawi football at a greater level in the continent and beyond,” he added.
During the event, teams played games with seven players aside. Bangwe Queens were declared champions after winning all three games.
