The 2019 MTN/FAZ Super League is set to kick off in January. To everyone’s surprise there is no official kick off date and fixtures are not yet out.
The Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) General Secretary Adrian Kashala also seems to be in the dark about when the league will kick off but has advised teams to be prepared.
“The dates for the commencement of the 2019 season could be announced any day by the FAZ Executive.So we are advising clubs to be ready, ” Kashala told the Zambia Daily Mail in an interview.
“Players’ registration has started and we expect all the clubs to register their players now because there will be no form of players’ identification that will be accepted apart from the FAZ issued cards,” he added.
FAZ have changed their calendar to align themselves with the new CAF calendar which will run from August to may following the European route.
CAF made the decision one Wednesday, January 10th at an Executive Committee meeting held in Casablanca, Morocco. To accommodate the transition, the current campaign will run from December 2018 until May 2019, before the final change sees the competitions beginning in September 2019.
In Zambia the transition will see the league divided into two zones of 10 teams each to make sure the league ends in May. This will league enough time for preaparations for the 2019/2020 season which will run from August to May conforming with the new CAF calendar.
However other countries are not changing immediately as they want to assess the situation before getting on the bandwagon. Malawi is one such nation that is waiting to do proper assessment.
In an interview with Malawan website, The Nation, Football Association of Malawi (FAM) competitions and media director Gomezgani Zakazaka, admitted the issue of abandoning the current Malawi football calendar, which runs from April to December, is giving association a headache because the international calendar coincides with the country’s rainy season, which renders most pitches waterlogged and unplayable.
“We switched to the current Malawi calendar because, much as we were trying to align ourselves with the international calendar, we had some local reasons as most of our matches were affected by rains between December and February. So we will do a proper analysis to see if it will be practical to get back to that route,” Zakazaka said.
No assessment of our poor performance at all levels. What this current Faz waiting for???
This current faz malabishi yekayeka
European calendar was made with the European climatic conditions,they never considered Africa,why would Africa be affected when most of our leagues are structured with the climatic conditions of Africa?
This is colonial mentality
Can kamanga just make something that will work n please the nation…