20 Malawi Under-17 National Football team players have left for Tanzania to participate  in the Federation of East African Secondary Schools Sports Associations (FEASSSA) tournament which will be held from August 16 to 24.

The tournament, which will also involve other sports disciplines like Netball, Hockey, Volleyball and Basketball, will bring together 3,500 learners from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zanzibar, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

In Football, Malawi will be represented by the Under-17 National team which its head coach, Declerk Msakakuwona, said he will utilize the tournament as part of preparations for COSAFA U-17 Youth Tournament which will be hosted by Malawi from September 26 to 5 October in Blantyre.

Msakakuwona said: “This is very great because there will about 12 teams that we are going to play with and this will be a good platform for us to see how our players perform as we are preparing for the COSAFA Youth Championship that Malawi will host next year.”

“We have left out taken 20 players out of the 30 that we have in camp but this doesn’t mean that this is the final list as we are about to take an MRI test to determine the boys’ real ages and then come up with the final 20.”

He further said the tournament will help his technical panel in assessing the capability of the boys at an international level.

The team is expected to return into the country by September 8 and proceed to camp for COSAFA preparations.