Mozambique: Football league needs €1.3M for airline tickets to resume Moçambola matches – Watch

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Football league needs €1.3M for airline tickets to resume Moçambola matches – Watch

1:13 CAT | 16 Jul 2025

Photo: Focus Televisão

The Mozambican Football League (LMF) admitted this Tuesday that it doesn’t know when the national ‘Moçambola’ championship will resume, asking the government for €1.3 million to purchase plane tickets.

“In budgetary terms, what we need right now is something like 100 million meticais (€1.3 million) to pay for air tickets. That’s what we need, because from last season to this one, there was a 100% increase in the cost of air tickets,” said LMF president Alberto Simango Júnior after a meeting with the Minister of Youth and Sports, Caifadine Manasse.

The issue at hand is the July 10 postponement, announced on July 10th, of the sixth round of the Mozambican football championship matches due to “constraints” in air travel for the teams.

A day later, Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM) explained that the unavailability of flights resulted from the failure of teams in the Moçambola championship to pay for their airfares.

Speaking to reporters at the end of the meeting with the minister, the league president pointed to the doubling of airfare prices as the source of the problem.

“Last year, we travelled with around 21,000 meticais [€283] per athlete, and this time it’s 42,000 meticais [€566],” Alberto Simango Júnior said, declaring that he understands the company’s [LAM] reasons, but that, “this increase, which is justifiable according to them”, is causing the league “some difficulties,” which is why it has requested government intervention.

“It’s difficult to say whether we will or we won’t (…). The government will intervene, and the Moçambola will continue. Therefore, whether it will be this week or not, let’s wait and see; it’s still only Tuesday. If it’s for purely sporting reasons, I can say yes, but since there are issues that don’t depend on us, we will monitor what the government can do in the coming hours and then we will say when we will resume,” added the LMF president.

The start of the 2025 Moçambola championship, initially scheduled for March 26th, was postponed to May 17th due to logistical and economic issues, the LMF announced at the time.

The reason for this postponement, compared to the initial schedule, was primarily logistical issues related to air transport issues in the country, but also economic issues due to the “context” Mozambique is experiencing, following a turbulent electoral process and social unrest over the last five months.

Source: Lusa