Malawi: Season kick-off postponed to November 21

By Green Muheya

Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has announced that Malawi's 2020/2021 football season which was scheduled to return on November 14 with the Charity Shield has been pushed a week ahead to November 21 because the earlier date clashes with the national team 2022 Africa Cup of Nations fixture.

FAM competition and commercialisation director Gomezani Zakazaka has confirmed the change of season kick0off.

He said this follows communication from Confederation of African Football (CAF) that Malawi will play away in Burkina Faso on November 12 while the return leg is on November 16.

"As the result the Ecobank Charity Shield will be played on the weekend of November 21 to 22.

"The TNM Super League kick-off has been affected since it has to be played a week after the Charity Shield which marks the beginning of the football calendar," said Zakazaka.

The new season was set to kick off in March, but was put on hold because of the government directive to suspend all sporting activities in the country due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The FAM executive committee during their meeting resolved that the season will start with the Charity Shield and the TNM League will kick off a week later, with the league season coming to an end in July 2021.

The meeting also resolved to allocate K62.2 million towards the referees of the Super League and Match Organization costs. This decision was made because the league will resume without spectators, therefore there will be no gate collections.

"On top of giving Super League of Malawi K15 million for operations as well as K10 million to each of the 16 clubs, FAM Executive decided to allocate an extra 62.2 million Kwacha towards referees and organization costs.

The Committee also approved the participation of the Malawi Senior Women's National team in the COSAFA Women's Championship scheduled for November in South Africa.

This article originally appeared on Nyasa Times

Photo: FIFA