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| Sports |
| Malawi drawn against Somalia in Olympic |
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by
Garry Chirwa, 12 June 2006
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06:40:14
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The Malawi Under-23 national soccer team has been drawn against Somalia in the preliminaries of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, but national coach Burkhard Ziese has said he will ask Fam not to participate in the tournament because of the Flames’ tight schedule
Fam president Walter Nyamilandu said the draw for the tournament was held in Munich, Germany, during Caf’s consultative meeting last week and Malawi is scheduled to take on the war-torn country on September 2 or 3 in Mogadishu and the return match is scheduled for two weeks later.
The Fam boss said the Somali Football Federation has accepted to play their home game in a neutral country because of the situation in their war-torn nation.
“The good thing is that the Somalis have accepted to play their home game at a neutral venue, they even proposed that we can play both games in Malawi,” said Nyamilandu in a telephone interview from Munich.
But Ziese is of the view that Malawi should pull out of the event because the dates clash with Flames’ Africa Nations Cup qualifiers against Morocco’s Atlas Lions and Zimbabwe’s Warriors.
“I personally think the draw for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is not fair because the dates clash with those of Africa Nations Cup qualifiers.
“Most of the players that we may want to use for the Olympic Games also play in the senior team like Joseph Kamwendo, Peter Wadabwa, Noel Mkandawire and Robert Ng’ambi. The other reason is funding. Already we are struggling to meet costs of preparing for the other international tournaments.
“So I will suggest to the Fam president that we should seriously consider withdrawing from this tournament and concentrate on the Africa Nations Cup qualifiers instead,” said the Flames coach.
Nyamilandu could not be reached for his reaction to Ziese’s suggestion as he was in transit on the way home from Germany.
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