* Through the Luwinga Inclusive Football Academy, talent nurturing will certainly reverse this poor trend
* Luwinga programme needs to emulate strides made by Lilongwe’s Ascent Soccer academy
* Which has moved many steps forward through establishment of its new campus
Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has finally rolled out the Luwinga Inclusive Football Academy at Luwinga Technical Centre in Mzuzu with a commitment to ensure the academy grows to become one of the best in the region in terms of enrollment, talent development and export.
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At the opening ceremony on Friday, FAM president, Fleetwood Haiya said the Luwinga Inclusive Football Academy, which will be managed under the FIFA technical development scheme, will help to produce right players for elite perfomance.
Haiya said the academy is key to his administration’s “strategy of enhancing player development pathways in developing players for elite performance at both national and club level”.
Then he made a confession which was sweet music to the ear — that “Malawi has failed to achieve international success at all levels due to lack of quality players because of poor player development programme in the absence schools of excellence”.
He added: “Malawi is perhaps the only nation in the region which has no big football stars in the big leagues in Europe, the Middle East and Asia and even Africa.”
This is very true and I describe it as sweet music to the ear because Haiya is in agreement to observations made before over the Flames’ poor performance where it mattered most — that it is because of lack of player depth in the pool of players we have to tap from.
It is also because of lack of proper transitions as age quickly catches up with national team players, which so often comes too early for some; indicating age cheating at the beginning of their career.
National coaches are continuously being fired over what is justified as poor tactical approach to matches but many analysts observed that it is through the poor performance of the players themselves, who even fail to control the ball.
Latest casualty of coach firing, Patrick Mabedi
Haiya pledges that Fam will establish more schools of excellence through the partnership with Malawi Schools Sports Association (Massa) and the Ministry of Education.
According to Fam, the academy — apart from dishing out fundamental football skills through professional coaching — will also focus on child character development, life skills and mentorship programmes allowing them to grow, not only as athletes but as individuals and responsible citizens too.
The players are also enrolled at Wukani Private School helping them develop academic skills and knowledge and will be nurtured into bright stars by South African expert talent coach, Thabo Senong, who is in charge of training the players and developing the local coaches.
What was not there before is what Senong promises, that his talent development scheme programme will focus on achieving making three objectives — finding the best talent, giving the best talent a chance around Malawi and also trying to get the best talent to train with the best talent.
This is all good news to hear, which comes after Haiya also announced a week ago at FAM’s budget consultation meeting with Member Associations — where a K12.4 billion revenue budget was presented for 2025, with main focus on youth development and national teams’ participation.
Haiya unveiled that youth development and national team participation are the main focus in the first year of the associations’ 2024-2034 strategic plan implementation and that all the national teams are expected to be in action next year with the women’s national team return to the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers being the main highlight.
The Scorchers
“We are targeting grassroots football so much as such we have heavily invested in this area of our game, we have also targeted referees and coaches’ education among other things,” he said. “We plan on participating in 13 competitions for the national teams in 2025 including continued funding of all 10 leagues that FAM funded in the year 2024.”
FAM further reports that it has applied for 15 FIFA projects which, if approved in total, will bring MK3 billion in revenue to the association to help develop the game at the grassroots level with both boys and girls targeted.
Over 400 million has been allocated for U-16 FAM girls and boys football development and Haiya also announced that new national team merchandise is coming in the new year and stock will be on the market from January 2025.
With that announcement, comes the official launch of the Luwinga Inclusive Football Academy and hopefully, it should emulate that strides made by Lilongwe’s Ascent Soccer academy, which has moved many steps forward through its new campus.
FAM’s national team coaches have tapped talent produced by Ascent Soccer and most notable is in the women’s football, who helped the Scorchers win the Council for Southern African Football Associations (COSAFA) Women’s Championship in 2023.
In May, Ascent Soccer’s Leticia Kanyamula won the Female Emerging Talent Award at the inaugural COSAFA Awards following her stellar performance at the COSAFA Women’s Championship 2023.
Leticia Chinyamula
Rose Kadzere
She was nominated alongside fellow Ascent Soccer star and two-time Malawi Player of the Year, 18-year-old Rose Kadzere, who went on to sign for France’s top women’s league, Montpellier HSC last October on a three-year deal — making her Malawi’s first-ever player (male or female) to make a direct professional football move to one of Europe’s top five leagues.
The USA and Canada-registered charity was founded in 2014 and works with over 85 boys and girls carefully selected from across Southeast Africa.
Just like the concept being deployed by FAM at Luwinga Technical Centre by enrolling the 42 players into Wukani Private School to help them develop their academic skills, Ascent Soccer is way above as it has global scholars in the US and Canada.
They include six from Malawi — Elias Zebron who graduated at the Taft School and is at Trinity College in the US; Lughano Nyondo, a graduate at Northeastern University Brooks School; Christina Kakhome at Lake Forest College and graduate of Milton Academy; Latu Kayira at Brooks School; and at Milton Academy Emmanuel Cheyo and Daud Major.
From Zimbabwe is Edna Macuacua, who is at Milton Academy while Ugandan Issa Abdu, a graduate of St. Andrews College in Canada, is at Western University — whose compatriot, Geoffrey Orgenrwot is also a graduate of St. Andrews College and is at Dickinson College.
Ascent Soccer prides that it starts at the grassroots by “inspiring and nurturing talented girls and boys in Southeast Africa to be brave, to lead by example and to believe in their ability to transform themselves, their communities and the world”.
“We are soccer and scholarship that puts people and the planet first; Our 4 Pillars are Soccer, Scholarship, People and Planet. Ascent Soccer empowers talent and promise in Southeast Africa, as the greenest soccer club and academy on the continent.
“We are a social impact organisation that transforms the lives of young men and women in some of Southeast Africa’s poorest countries by providing opportunities for comprehensive education, critical life skills and character development — combined with world-class soccer skill development.”
Its vision is to guide youth to realise and reach their potential, growing into exceptional young men and women who not only re-invest in their own communities, but provide opportunities for the success of future graduates.
Among many achievements include Ascent U21 girls becoming the first youth team ever to compete in a senior Champions League event during the CAF Champions League-COSAFA qualifier, which FAM hosted.
They earned the place in the qualifiers after their stunning victory in May during the Malawi’s Senior Women’s National Championship under the tutelage of head coach and operations director, Thom Mkolongo.
In July, the Ascent Soccer U16 girls became Malawi’s first full female squad (junior or senior) to ever play competitively in Europe, with Faith Chinzimu leading the way with nine goals in six games, versus the likes of Arsenal, Brighton, Bayern Munich and FC Nordsjaelland.
Ascent Soccer U16 boys went a three-week international tour that included stays in Iceland and Ireland which was their second straight year where they went to defend the Rey Cup.
All this is to remind that eyes will be watching if indeed Luwinga school of excellence will achieve what Ascent Soccer has put as benchmark — but not withstanding that, we at Maravi Express, profoundly applaud Haiya’s administration in the motto of ‘Transforming the Game’.
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The country’s football standards have completely gone backwards such that when our clubs fail to break through preliminary stages when they participate in CAF international interclub competitions.
The teams scout players from amongst fellow clubs — most of them recycled — without taking the risk of promoting young talent from their reserve sides; or even tapping from Ascent Soccer.
Daud Major
Investment received after tapping talent from Ascent Soccer and later from Luwinga Inclusive Football Academy, will help these academies sustain their programmes just as Ascent Soccer’s 9th Global Scholar, Daud Major, whose international pathway generated over US$3.5 million in scholarship value for its operations.
Once more, well done, Haiya and team and this should be a wake up call to our football clubs to cast their nets wide and tap young talent that is just idle out there. Maybe take a leaf on how FAM identified its first cohort of 42 players that were scouted across the country — or how Ascent Soccer gets its young talent from.
