Seychelles' women's national football team to face Malawi in friendly

Seychelles side left on September 22 and will return on the 29. (Seychelles News Agency)

(Seychelles News Agency) - The Seychelles women's national football team will face Malawi on Monday in a friendly match as part of the African side's training in preparation for the COSAFA women's competition in October.

This was revealed by the chief executive of the Seychelles Football Federation (SFF), Dennis Rose, in a recent interview with reporters.

Rose said that to meet its obligation as a FIFA member, the Seychelles women's national team has to play four international matches.

"Since our football federation has a good relationship with the federation of Malawi, we have been invited to play two games with their women's team when they start their training camp," he said.

The games will take place on September 25 and 28 as part of Malawi's preparation. Seychelles' side left on September 22 and will return on the 29.

Malawi will be using the games as preparations for the upcoming 2023 HOLLYWOODBETS COSAFA Women's Football Championship, which will be held in Gauteng, South Africa from October 4-15. The first match for Malawi will be against South Africa on October 4.

Meanwhile, the SFF announced that the women's national side will be having a new international coach from Singapore, Chris Yip-Au, as of October 1. The previous coach, Angeline Chua also from Singapore, left to take up the post with the Fiji national team.

"On the development of women's football, there have not been many activities in the last couple of months. This is simply because since our women's national team coach left we were in search of another coach. [...] We advertised both nationally and internationally and finally, we got two candidates, a French and a Singaporean. We chose the French coach who then backed out, so we selected the Singaporean," Rose explained.

He said that the other advantage of a coach from Singapore is that it will ensure continuity and this will be to the Seychelles side's advantage as the coaching style is the same.  

Rose said that the technical department has also done some research and has proposed a new format for the local women's football competition.

"Playing 11 versus 11 for the women's competitions means that there are not enough teams and there is also an obligation on clubs to have a women's team as well. This is a requirement - aside from the club men's team. They must have a youth and a women's team to meet the FIFA criteria for club licensing," he said.

So when the women's competition starts it will be an 8-a-side which SFF hopes will mean more clubs taking part.