Wa Ganyu

Malawi problems keep coming and this time affecting the Under 17 Malawi Football team that has travelled to Harare, Zimbabwe for the TotalEnergies CAF Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations | COSAFA Qualifiers.

Malawi started with a 3-1 victory over Madagascar but despite the win, coach Enos Chatama had only four players on the bench—forcing him to play players out of position and had only one substitution.

The coach has travelled to Harare with 21 players but only 15 have passports and are eligible to play. The rest have travel documents, not allowed to play.

Application was done on time and were promised to have passports before leaving Malawi but the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services could not print them due to the current printing problems the department is facing.

The Football Association of Malawi (FAM) is hoping that by tomorrow, Saturday, they might have remaining passports printed and send them to Harare ahead of their Sunday match against the defending champions Zambia, the match will kick off at 3pm.

However, coach Chatama is disappointed with the developments. Speaking after today’s match, Chatama said they played under difficult circumstances hence forcing players to play out of their normal positions.

Today’s man of the match James Lumba who plays as a striker was featured as a midfielder with other strikers playing as defenders with the first choice goalkeeper left civilian as his passport is on ready.

“We played under a very difficult circumstance; we had only 14 players, two substitutions plus the goalkeeper which affected our tactical adjustments in the game, a lot of players played out of positions which was very difficult for the team.

“It was difficult to make substitutions; we had only one substitution, we side-lined players without passports. Otherwise we had a good game, created a lot of chances,” he said.

Malawi is in Group B alongside Madagascar, Zambia and South Africa.