Tabitha Chawinga to spice up Castel Malawi’s football frenzy featuring Bullets v Silver exhibition match

* On offer an array of food stalls, bars outside Bingu National Stadium

* The biggest cup in the history of Malawi football is finally here — all is set

By Duncan Mlanjira

Castel Malawi will launch the K1 billion Challenge Cup with razzmatazz with a football frenzy of activities that include exhibition match between Nyasa Big Bullets and Silver Strikers whose winners’ trophy will be presented by women football player of the moment, Tabitha Chawinga.

To be held at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe tomorrow, June 17 will also be spiced by an array of food stalls, bars outside stadium and announcing launch Castel Malawi head of marketing, Frank Binauli says: “The biggest cup in the history of Malawi football is finally here — all is set, we are using the match between Bullets and Silver to officially kick-off the campaign ahead of actual fixtures which will start in July.”

“For the launch event, we will unveil the cup with pomp and fanfare and apart from the football match, fans can look forward to enjoying music, food and Castel brands.”

He added that the exhibition match will be spiced up by various exciting activities — notable being cup presentation by the top women football star Tabitha and the reigning Miss Malawi.

The icing on the cake for football fans is an all-night music show featuring Malawi’s top musicians and bands, whose concert will be set outside the BNS premises soon after the exhibition game and continues until Sunday.

The K1 billion Castel Challenge Cup was unveiled in April by the country’s largest brewery, Castel Distributors Ltd for the next three years, which goes down the history books as Malawi’s largest sporting sponsorship ever.

Each year, Castel will stake K320 million with the champions banking a K50 million cheque and K25 million for the runners-up and the champions will automatically earn their slot in Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions Cup.

This is as dictated by CAF and FIFA rules that the winners of any country’s largest cup represents that nation in the continental cup tournament.

At the unveiling as deal signing, Castel’s Managing Director, Thomas Reynaud said the tournament is to challenge footballers in the country to live up to their full potential in the support of talent development from the grassroots.

The Challenge Cup, to be played on a knock-out basis nationally, will take the bottom-up approach aiming to unravel young talent and develop grassroots football — akin to how global icon Brazil’s Pele and Flames legend Kinnah ‘Electric’ Phiri were scouted.

It is under the theme; ‘Ibongetse’ (make it fiery) at it will offer immense socio-economic benefits for Malawi in terms of job creation and revenue generation at game venues, pubs and supporting businesses.