Namibia FA to wait longer to fix their house

Namibia fans during the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Finals match between South Africa and Namibia at Al Salam Stadium in Cairo, Egypt on 28 June 2019 © Ryan Wilkisky/BackpagePix

by Staff Reporter

Friday Oct 18, 2019. 16:00

The mandate of the normalisation committee set up to fix football in Namibia and put the country’s football association back on its feet has been extended until March 2020, FIFA said..

They will remain in charge for a month after February’s planned Namibia Football Association congress where new leadership will be elected.

World football’s governing body issued the extension as the normalisation committee battles with the Namibia Premier League, which the NC has suspended.

FIFA have set out a roadmap “which foresees the full implementation of the normalisation committee’s mandate, and includes an elective NFA congress in February 2020, at the latest”.

Fifa also decided “to extend the normalisation committee’s mandate until 15 March 2020; and to clarify that the decisions of the NFA normalisation committee, acting as an electoral committee in the context of the elective congress, will be final and binding”.

The committee was set up in February and was supposed to have sorted out the FA’s problems by May, but then had that deadline extended to October 15.

“This task has been complicated by logistical difficulties in organising and attending meetings across Namibia to ensure that all NFA members are in good standing, and by a conflictual relationship between the NFA and the Namibia Premier League,” said FIFA.

The normalisation committee suspended the NPL last month because its refusal to comply with a directive to allow relegated Orlando Pirates and Civics to remain in the league for the coming season.

Last season ended in chaos as Young Africans were expelled for playing a Zimbabwean defaulter, using a false name, and the two Windhoek clubs – both former champions – relegated but with no teams coming up from the lower leagues, which were not played.

The league want to start the new season with just 13 teams instead of 16 teams but the FIFA committee, made up of independent experts from outside the game, said they were should be no relegation and promotion as per an earlier directive with the backing of world football’s governing body.