By: Wonder Dzonzi (contributor)
Only a few minutes remain on the clock before the final whistle. His school team trails by a goal and has run out of substitutes on the bench.
The sports master turns to the nearest pupil around him, a thirteen-year-old boy who has never been seen kicking a soccer ball anywhere within the Zolozolo Primary School campus in the city of Mzuzu.
By the orders of his parents, the boy is restricted from playing the game as they claim by combining football and academic studies, one of the two will end up suffering.
But today the boy is to defy his parent’s orders as he picks up the school team jersey, and eventually, he is hurled into the fray entrusted with the responsibility of rescuing the team from the jaws of defeat.
To the surprise of many, the boy is terrific. Showing some deft and sleek touches combined with speed, the young boy inspires his school team to a comeback, salvaging a point from a game that was nearly lost.
His outstanding performance doesn’t go unnoticed. It catches the eye of one Khumbo Sibale, then coach of a football academy named after the Flames and Bullets legend Lawrence Waya.
At the blow of the final whistle, Sibale could not resist approaching the late second-half substitute who, in his cameo, stole the show.
Coach Sibale does not mince his words. He wants the boy. The boy wants it too, but he fears his parents won’t allow it.
The following day, Sibale does all he can to reach out to the boy’s parents. He convinces them. He tells them the boy has something special, that a future in football is not imaginary.
Five years later after years of grooming and nurturing that boy was now ready to represent his country at junior level.
His moment of reckoning would come on 3rd November 2022, as he is aboard a plane for the first time in his life. The destination is eSwatini for the 2022 COSAFA U-20 Games.
That boy’s name is Chikumbutso Salima.
From the dusty streets of Zolozolo in Mzuzu, Salima begins to watch his football life open up,
Despite missing the early stages of his football development due the parents’ , Salima grows into one of the brightest attacking prospects Malawi has produced in recent seasons.
At the COSAFA junior tournament, he finishes with two goals against Namibia and one assist in three matches. The juniors Flames collect six points but fall short of progression by a single point.
Back home, Salima is now starring for the reserve side of domestic football powerhouse FCB Nyasa Big Bullets.
Still he is work in progress having graduated from the Lawrence Waya Academy and Mbahewe FC where he earned praises from his coach Chisomo Kamlanje.
It was at Bullets reserves where the winger’s turning point came under Enos Chatama.
Today, at 21, Salima openly credits that phase as the furnace that shaped him.
At the end of his final season with the Reserves, he was voted Player of the Season, FDH Bank Cup Player of the Tournament, and Discovery of the Tournament, after helping the side finish runners-up.
He left the reserves with 45 goals to his name. A loan move to TNM Super League debutants Bangwe All-Stars followed. The idea was exposure. What came was impact.
In 23 appearances across all competitions, Salima scored 11 goals, assisted three, and claimed three Player of the Match awards. Fans called for his early recall.
By the time he returned to Bullets’ first team, the boy from Zolozolo was no longer knocking. He had come to stay.
In his full debut season at the top level, Salima was also named Most Improved Player, a quiet but heavy acknowledgement of how far he had climbed in a short space of time.
Silverware followed too. Wearing Bullets red, he lifted the Airtel Top 8 Trophy, adding a winners’ medal to a résumé that was already beginning to stretch.
The 2025 TNM Super League season became the one that fully ushered Salima to the top.
Across 28 appearances, the winger produced 15 goals and 13 assists, numbers that spoke of growth beyond raw pace. He finished the campaign as a joint top scorer in the league, collected four Player of the Match awards, and claimed three Player of the Month honours.
And now in the leap of his blossoming career, the noxious winger takes his biggest step yet.
Salima joins Sudanese side Al-Merriekh Sporting Club off the back of that blistering campaign, becoming one of the most expensive exports from Malawi’s top-flight football, with the transfer fee widely speculated within football circles to be at 100 million Malawian Kwacha.
From Zolozolo Primary School.
From a substitute with no boots.
From a boy once told football was a distraction.
Salima leaves Malawi’s top flight league not as a gamble, but as proof of what patience, coaching, and refusal to accept limits can produce.
And somewhere in Mzuzu, the clock is still ticking.
