LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-Silver Strikers have officially parted ways with vice captain Maxwell Paipi following the expiry of his contract, bringing an end to a memorable chapter between the player and the Bankers.
The club confirmed Paipi’s departure through a statement shared on its official Facebook page, acknowledging his contribution and commitment during his time at Area 47-based outfit.
Paipi’s journey with Silver Strikers dates back to 2019 when he earned promotion to the senior team from the club’s Reserve side after a series of impressive performances.
From the onset, the defender-cum-midfielder demonstrated discipline, versatility and consistency, qualities that quickly made him a reliable option within the squad.
Over the years, his steady growth and leadership traits saw him rise through the ranks, eventually earning the vice captain’s armband a role that reflected the trust placed in him by the technical panel and management.
In its statement, the club praised Paipi’s hard work and dedication, describing him as a player who embodied professionalism and commitment throughout his stay.
Paipi was part of one of Silver Strikers’ most successful periods, contributing to several major trophies that strengthened the club’s dominance on the domestic scene.
Among the notable achievements during his tenure are the 2019 Airtel Top 8 Cup triumph and the 2021 FDH Cup victory, both of which highlighted his growing influence in the team.
He also played a role in the club’s historic 2024 TNM Super League Championship, a title that ended a long wait for league glory.
Paipi further added to his medal collection with the 2025 FDH Cup, cementing his legacy as one of the players who helped shape Silver Strikers’ recent success.
His departure comes at a time of transition for the club, following the exit of attacking midfielder Duncan Nyoni just a day earlier, also after the expiry of his contract.
The back to back exits signal a potential rebuilding phase as Silver Strikers prepare for the upcoming season and possible continental engagements.
Meanwhile, Paipi’s future appears to lie beyond Malawi, with reports linking him to a Zimbabwean football club, suggesting that the experienced campaigner could soon be embarking on a new challenge abroad.
Share this:
Like this:
LikeLoading…
Discover more from The Maravi Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
LIBREVILLE-(MaraviPost)-The Gabonese government has taken drastic measures against the country’s national football team following a disastrous exit from the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament currently taking place in Morocco.
In a statement broadcast on national television, Gabon’s Minister of Sports, Simplice Désiré Mamboula, announced the immediate suspension of the entire national team, popularly known as The Panthers, until further notice.
The decision comes after Gabon finished bottom of Group F, losing all three of their group matches.
As part of the shake up, the government dismissed head coach Thierry Mouyouma and dissolved the entire technical and coaching staff, citing poor performance and lack of discipline within the team setup.
The minister also revealed that senior players Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Bruno Ecuele Manga, who served as team captain, have been barred from future national team duties.
Authorities accused the experienced players of failing to provide leadership during the tournament.
Gabon suffered defeats against Cameroon, Mozambique and Ivory Coast, exiting the competition without a single point.
The poor showing sparked outrage among fans back home, with many calling for accountability and reforms in the country’s football administration.
Government officials described the AFCON campaign as “humiliating” and said the suspension is meant to allow time for reflection and restructuring of national football.
Share this:
Like this:
LikeLoading…
Discover more from The Maravi Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
While 2025 certainly had some great TV shows, it also had a lion’s share of terrible series.
If we’re gonna talk about the best of 2025, then we naturally have to talk about the worst. Not every show is gonna be a hit, not every season 1 is an Emmy nominee. Many of them simply head to the trash — and some trash even gets a second season.
Watch With Us is rounding up the very bottom of our TV watches this year, from an ill-fated Suits spinoff to a goofy political thriller starring Robert De Niro.
We’ve picked and ranked the five worst shows that 2025 had to offer.
If The Pitt was the best medical drama of 2025, then Pulse may have been the worst. The show follows a group of surgical and emergency residents at Maguire Hospital, a trauma center in Miami, as they all vie for the same thing: the position of Emergency Medicine Chief Resident. The residents navigate their personal and professional lives as they handle various medical crises while dealing with the fallout of a massive scandal at their place of work.
Pulse ultimately failed to charm both reviewers and audiences, and it was justifiably canceled shortly after its disappointing debut. Critics ultimately found that Pulse went all-in on tired tropes without doing enough to set it apart from the other hospital dramas like Breathless or even the 86th season of Grey’s Anatomy. If it’s just another medical procedural show, then why not watch something that actually elevates itself like The Pitt? Despite some good acting, poor plotting, annoying characters and a questionable depiction of sexual harassment made this show is one to skip.
4. ‘Zero Day’ — Netflix
Robert De Niro stars as George Mullen, a former United States president who is brought out of retirement by his successor to handle a very special assignment. Mullen has been assigned as head of a group investigating a massive, global cyberterrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. You see a new prestige series starring an acting tour de force like De Niro and you think, “How could it go wrong?”
Well, when it comes to Zero Day, it can go very wrong. The political thriller executive produced by Noah Oppenheim (A House of Dynamite) ends up a totally forgettable experience — a mealy-mouthed commentary on hot-button issues that fails to deliver anything of substance. Even the additional star power of Angela Bassett, Jesse Plemons andConnie Brittoncan’t help poor screenwriting and middling tension.
3. ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ — Netflix
This is not the first time that Ryan Murphy‘s name will grace this list since the highly prolific showrunner committed multiple crimes against television this year. But perhaps the less offensive to the tastes was Monster: The Ed Gein Story, although it’s really a “lesser of two evils” situation. The third installment of the Monster anthology series follows the life of notorious serial killer Ed Gein while examining his influence on pop culture and true crime.
Critics somehow managed to find more value in Monster: The Ed Gein Story than this list’s next inclusion, All’s Fair, which sports an impressive 6 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes compared to Monster’s 22 percent. The main high point of the show is the ensemble cast’s across-the-board great performances and some stellar production design as well. However, most found Monster to be a repulsive contortion of Gein’s persona while failing to meaningfully comment on pop culture — the only thing Monster: The Ed GeinStory does is indulge in the very thing it wishes to admonish.
2. ‘All’s Fair’ — Hulu
The only reason All’s Fair isn’t number one on this list is that while the show was universally panned by critics, it received enough hate-watches from audiences to justify its continued existence — but just barely. It’s one of those Emily in Paris situations, where the car crash on the side of the road makes drivers wanna crane their necks and get a good look, even though they shouldn’t. It’s the same situation with All’s Fair, Murphy’s legal drama about an all-female law firm in Los Angeles that managed to clinch a series renewal.
A show that receives the moniker from numerous critics as being “one of the worst shows ever made” is unfortunately going to get a lot of people to watch out of curiosity for how exactly a show could be that bad. In the end, All’s Fair isn’t even a “so bad it’s good” situation because the show is too boring, too shallow and poorly written, to be entertainingly awful, all while helmed by an absolutely forgettable performance from Kim Kardashian.
1. ‘Suits LA’ — Peacock
The television “Flop of the Year” award goes to Suits LA, a remarkably ill-conceived spinoff of Suits predicated on the fact that people enjoyed checking out Suits when it was added to Netflix. But trying to exploit the streaming success of an older show doesn’t mean that a creatively uninspired spinoff is going to generate the same success. The creators behind Suits LA seemed not to understand what made Suits so good to begin with, and instead of trying something new and interesting, they just create the same thing a second time — but worse.
Suits LA simply tries to transpose the narrative of Suits onto a different setting, but without any of the writing, acting or editing that made the original a great, breezy and bingeable watch. Plus, the show already had a failed spinoff with Pearson back in 2019, which was cancelled after one season and starred one of Suits’ most compelling characters. If a show with an original character couldn’t work, why did they think they could capture magic with an all-new cast playing poorly-written characters? If All’s Fair at least has hate-watch intrigue, Suits LA absolutely has nothing to justify watching it.
Share this:
Like this:
LikeLoading…
Discover more from The Maravi Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“What a gift,” Vanessa, 43, wrote via her Instagram Stories on Tuesday, December 30, sharing a screenshot from End of an Era. “We love you @taylorswift 💙!!!!!!”
As Swift, 36, practiced an acoustic section mashup ahead of one of her last Eras Tour concerts in Canada, she was dressed in a blue Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation sweatshirt. (Kobe’s widow founded the organization after her husband and daughter Gianna tragically died in a 2020 helicopter crash, along with six other people.)
In a follow-up slide, Vanessa posted another pic of Swift wearing her Mamba merch and added a “We [heart] you” sticker, alongside one of an illustrated pair of hands making a heart like Swift’s Fearless symbol.
Swift has a long history with the Bryant family, starting in 2015 when she enlisted Kobe to join her onstage during the Los Angeles stop on her 1989 Tour. Kobe even presented the pop star with a banner honoring her record 16 sold-out shows at the same venue where his Lakers played home games.
Kobe died at age 41 five years later in a helicopter crash alongside 13-year-old daughter Gianna. (Kobe and Vanessa also shared daughters Natalia, Bianka and Capri.)
“My heart is in pieces hearing the news of this unimaginable tragedy. I can’t fathom what the families are going through,” Swift tweeted in 2020 after the NBA icon’s death. “Kobe meant so much to me and to us all. Sending my prayers, love, and endless condolences to Vanessa and the family and anyone who lost someone on that flight.”
Swift remained close to Vanessa and her family in the years since Kobe and Gianna’s deaths. When the Bryants attended Swift’s Eras show in L.A. in August 2023, Bianka received the “22” hat.
Taylor SwiftCourtesy of Vanessa Bryant/Instagram
“Every person in that audience, hopefully, is being shaped positively in some way by something that they see or something that they hear,” Swift explained of the tradition in her Disney+ docuseries. “The ‘22’ moment stems from a hat that I wore on the Red Tour, so I wanted to really bring back that moment of just kinda, like, [having] a moment with a fan where I actually get close with them.”
While performing “22,” Swift sashayed down her catwalk to give her Red-inspired fedora to a waiting concertgoer.
“What’s so interesting about that moment every night is I never know what kid I’m gonna meet,” the Grammy winner said. “I’ve got people in the audience, scouring the crowd for the first couple of eras, trying to find a kid who knows every single word to the songs and having the time of their lives at this show.”
According to Swift, the lucky child chosen is “basically a representative of every kid in that crowd.”
“It could be, like, a little kid that gets really shy when all of a sudden they’re seeing 60,000 people for the first time or, it could be, there are kids that bloom under the bright lights and they’re just, like, ‘I’m a pop star now.’ It’s always wild to be in this moment with this person that I’ve never met before, this little kid, and everything’s going on around us and somehow we’re able to just have this moment be completely between us.”
Taylor Swift: The End of an Era is now streaming on Disney+.
Share this:
Like this:
LikeLoading…
Discover more from The Maravi Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-FIFA’s confirmation of Malawi’s international referees for the 2026 season has been received as a major boost for the country’s match officials, highlighting growing trust in local refereeing standards.
A total of 17 Malawian officials have been cleared to officiate international assignments in 2026, reflecting Malawi’s continued presence on the global football stage under FIFA’s watch.
The approved contingent is made up of six centre referees, nine assistant referees and two beach soccer referees, demonstrating balanced representation across different officiating roles.
One of the key highlights of the list is the inclusion of Emily Chathamthumba, who steps in following the retirement of experienced referee Bernadetta Kuyimbira, marking a generational transition in women’s refereeing.
Rose Zimba has also reclaimed her place on the FIFA International Referees List, signaling a successful return after meeting FIFA’s stringent reassessment criteria.
In the area of match technology, Eness Gumbo remains Malawi’s sole Video Assistant Referee (VAR), continuing to carry the responsibility of representing the country in this highly specialized role.
Malawi’s footprint in beach soccer has also been maintained, with Mathews Ngwira and Solomon Siliwonde approved to officiate in the discipline at international level.
According to FIFA regulations, all Member Associations are required to submit annual nominations for referees, either for renewal or new inclusion, a process coordinated locally by the FAM Referees Committee.
The committee conducts detailed internal assessments to ensure nominees comply with FIFA requirements, including medical clearance, fitness tests and performance evaluations.
Once the nominations are forwarded, FIFA retains full authority to approve or reject any official who does not meet its global standards, underscoring the competitiveness of international refereeing.
Successful referees are permitted to officiate international fixtures and wear the prestigious FIFA badge throughout the 2026 calendar year, although the badge remains FIFA property and is subject to annual review.
Commenting on the development, sports analyst Ibrahim Phiri described the announcement as encouraging for Malawian referees but stressed that professionalism and consistency will be key if FIFA’s confidence is to be sustained.
Share this:
Like this:
LikeLoading…
Discover more from The Maravi Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-The Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has approved a MK15.3 billion budget for the 2026 financial year following a successful Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held virtually on Tuesday.
The approved budget represents a significant increase of about 40 percent from the projected MK11 billion revenues for 2025 and is anchored on strengthening Youth development and grassroots football, football competition and league development, capacity building and governance, infrastructure development and international competitiveness across all levels of the game.
“The 2026 Budget has been prepared in a difficult economic environment characterized by high inflation, fiscal constraints and foreign exchange challenges.
We have developed a realistic, disciplined and growth-oriented budget, guided by FAM Strategic Plan,FIFA Forward 3.0 framework, and our shared vision of transforming football into a competitive, professionally run and financially sustainable industry,” said FAM president Fleetwood Haiya.
According to the budget, total projected expenditure for 2026 stands at MK14.8 billion, leaving the association with an anticipated surplus of MK507 million by the end of the financial year. The surplus will be channeled towards capital projects and long-term football development initiatives.
The revenue projections are largely driven by FIFA funding, Malawi Government support, corporate partnerships and sponsorships, investment income, broadcasting rights and gate collections.
FIFA project funding remains a major pillar, with several infrastructure projects lined up, including the construction and rehabilitation of facilities at Mpira Stadium, Luwinga and MDC, as well as the development of a beach soccer stadium.
On the expenditure side, the budget prioritizes football activities, with MK8.9 billion allocated to operational football programmes. These include senior and junior national teams, youth development, grassroots football, capacity building, and FAM-funded competitions.
The association plans to participate in 16 international engagements in 2026, spanning senior, youth and beach soccer categories.
Among other are the 2027 AFCON qualifiers, Women’s AFCON which will be used as World Cup qualifiers as well as Under 20 and Under 17 Women’s World Cup qualifiers.
Senior national teams have been allocated MK3.8 billion to support participation in competitions such as AFCON, WAFCON and COSAFA, while junior national teams will benefit from a significantly increased allocation of MK1.6 billion, underscoring FAM’s commitment to building a strong talent pipeline from grassroots to elite level.
Haiya said the budget prioritizes competitive success and international representation, and resources allocated are aimed at earning qualification for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) for the Men’s Senior National Team,World Cup qualification for the Malawi Women’s National Team (Scorchers) and U20 Women’s National Team as well as competitive participation in COSAFA tournaments, with a clear performance target of reaching at least the semi-final stage across age groups and categories.
Youth development programmes aimed at enhancing a structured pathway from grassroots to elite and senior national teams have been allocated MK727 million. This will go towards supporting the Nthanda Under-14 and M’mera Mpoyamba Under-16 leagues, as well as elite youth development at Luwinga Inclusive Academy,
Capacity building and governance initiatives for coaches, referees, clubs, administrators. Member Association and match safety personnel will also continue, with MK527 million set aside for training courses, workshops and seminars.
The budget further provides for governance and administration, including congress meetings, club licensing, affiliate grants and operational costs, alongside increased investment in marketing, events and commercial activities aimed at growing football as a sustainable business.
FAM has also allocated K40 million subvention to its member Associations as well K10 million each for administration and operations to the Football Players Association and the Football Legends Association who attended the Congress gathering for the first time.
“Our vision commits to greater inclusion of players and key stakeholders within the association’s governance structures, and this is why FAM has for the first time ever invited the Football Legends Association and Football Players Association its General Assembly and will be part and parcel of our future gatherings alongside other our other Professional and technical partners namely National Youth Football Association, the National Football Coaches Association, and the National Referees Association
“The budget is strategic, ambitious and achievable. It aligns financial resources with clear football development objectives, while maintaining fiscal discipline and transparency,” said Haiya.
Share this:
Like this:
LikeLoading…
Discover more from The Maravi Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
