By Edwin Mbewe
LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-One of the country’s sports analysts Dr. Jones Kaponda Masiye says the nation must stop expecting miracles to happen to teams performing well in international tournaments.
Dr Masiye argues that only good structures and thorough preparations bring victories to teams .
Masiye was reacting to the performances of Malawi under 18 netball team and Malawi under 17 football team on the just ended COSAFA regional 5 tournaments which was taking place in Maseru, Lesotho.
Junior Flames have won the Bronze medal after defeating Eswatini by four goals to nil in a third place play off,while Young Queens have won a Silver medal after failing to hack Young Spar Proteas as their elder sisters performed.
The team lost in the group stages by 42 goals to 37,going into today’s final Malawi were focused to revenge the assault but it wasn’t to be as the South Africans fine tuned their squad. No wonder team again beat Malawi by 33 goals to 26 to win the Gold medal.
“Let me start by congratulating the two teams for finishing on second and third positions respectively, they have done better taking into consideration of how they prepared for the tournament. Our netball team had less than a week to prepare for the regional tournament and we expected a Miracle in results? No!!.
“As a country we have to plan a head for such tournaments as they happen annually, Ministry of Sports and Sports council should always put their calendar in order to make sure we have teams readily available for the tournament”, he said.
Added Masiye, “It is sad that the same teams Zambia and South Africa who have been defeating us,why don’t we learn from our friends on what they do for them to be always producing good teams,send people to learn from them.
“We have to introduce district leagues,if we do like that I believe we should be able to get players from other district as of now only three cities,Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu which contribute players which is bad somehow”.
Kaponda Masiye has however hailed Football Association of Malawi (FAM) for sending Malawi under 17 team whose age ranges were 14-17 saying if team can be maintained for some years will make a good senior team.
He has then asked administrators to introduce mentorship, saying the young lads have to be followed and always being encouraged and motivated on regular basis.
The approach will help maintaining these boys hence reducing the costs of talent identification because we can easily promote them into our under 20,23 teams.
Malawi host Regional 5 tournaments next year 2022.
