ChizumuluThe Club
Chizumulu United plays out of Chizumulu Island, one of two inhabited islands in Lake Malawi (alongside neighboring Likoma Island). There's no bridge and no regular flight — getting to the mainland means a boat, sometimes a small wooden one, sometimes the MV Ilala ferry that also serves Mozambique further down the lake. The club competes in the Northern Region Football Association's League One, the third tier of Malawian football.
How we got here
2024
Founded
Mcfallen Mafuta, Mackson Thundu, and a handful of other early staff (some since moved on) found Chizumulu United on Chizumulu Island, with Mcfallen taking charge as the club's first head coach.
2024–25 season
Barely surviving
Money is tight enough that just fielding a team each week is a struggle, and results are poor. Partway through the season, a traveling Korean YouTuber documenting unusual football leagues — Changbakgol — visits the island, embeds with the squad, and travels to away games with them. The club finishes 6th in its cluster.
Mid-2025
One payment turns into an offer
Back in Korea, Changbakgol and head coach Mcfallen are still messaging. Mcfallen mentions the club may not be able to afford the roughly 400,000 won registration fee for the next season. Changbakgol sends it — then decides a one-off payment won't fix anything long-term.
June 6, 2025
Ownership announced
Changbakgol posts to his YouTube community that he intends to become Chizumulu United's owner.
August 2025
Ownership signed
Club officials and island representatives sign the ownership transfer, making Changbakgol Chizumulu United's chairman.
2025–26 season
Strong at home, learning away
The club wins consistently at home but struggles on the road. In November, a partnership with K League club FC Anyang brings player-coach Han Ga-ram — a UEFA B-license holder — to Malawi for a week of coaching. Chizumulu win their next away match immediately after. The club overhauls its set pieces, defense, and training sessions, and finishes 6th of 16 teams, later picking up the league's fair-play award.
October 2025
A bigger sponsor
Korean credit union federation Shinhyup signs on as a major sponsor, more than doubling the previous main sponsorship, with funds earmarked for a player dormitory and a coaching staff office.
April 2026
Training trip to Korea
A Korea training trip planned since the 2025 takeover — delayed first by Malawi's slow administrative processes, then by an oil-price spike from the US–Iran war — finally happens: the coaching staff spend a month training alongside FC Anyang's first team and youth squads.
2026–27 season
Current season
Chizumulu open the delayed season with a 3-1 home win, drop their first away match of the year, then respond with a win and a draw to sit in the upper half of the table.
What the owner actually does
As chairman, he handles the club's administration, sponsorships, and promotion — funding the first official kits, bringing in supply and equipment sponsors, and covering travel and operating costs for a squad that plays some of the longest, hardest away trips in the league. He has no say in team selection or tactics; those decisions stay entirely with head coach Mcfallen Mafuta and his coaching staff. Most of what he knows about the day-to-day running of a football club, by his own account, comes from years of playing Football Manager.
The crest and the kit
The club's first official jersey was designed around the shape of Chizumulu Island itself and the pattern of the fishing nets used by island residents, with a goalkeeper kit using pink for sunset and light blue for dawn. The crest carries a Chichewa phrase that translates to "fight until the end and win." Sponsors who helped fund that first kit run and the club's ongoing costs include Deépo (kit), Myprotein, WIP, ElChoice, and Brandbay.
Following the club
Match highlights, away-day trips, and interviews are filmed and narrated by the chairman himself on the Changbakgol YouTube channel, in Korean. Chizumulu TV is a companion site that adds English subtitles to that footage for fans who don't speak Korean or Chichewa.