Nyasa Big Bullets head coach Kalisto Pasuwa had his first pre-match interview for the 2022 season on Friday when he spoke to club media ahead of Saturday’s Charity Shield match against Silver Strikers at Kamuzu Stadium.
The tactician talked about Thursday’s defeat to Sable Farming in our pre-season friendly against the newly-promoted side, touching on areas he saw his players doing well, as well as his expectations from facing the Bankers and the players who were released by the club.
Below is a full transcript of what he told Bullets Media after Friday afternoon’s training session at the Blantyre Sports Club.
On how demanding it is to go into the new season three weeks after resuming pre-season training…
“We are building a team and building a team is a process, hence the reason why we were talking about fitness in the boys as you know we had three to four weeks of pre-season and normally we would prefer to have five to six weeks of pre-season. We had our first friendly match on Thursday against Sable Farming and you could see that our opponents were everywhere but my boys fared well apart from the transition where we were losing possession and conceded goals – Most of the guys, they played above 60 minutes, which was okay as you know that in pre-season we prepare the whole team to have the same levels of energy and we always have a very busy season with extra games, so we need them to be fit in order to come up with results”.
On what to expect from Silver Strikers match in the NBS Bank Charity Shield…
“Silver Strikers are not an opponent to underrate and if you can analyze all the games we have played against them, it was an end to end packed action with entertaining football. It’s been games of mistakes and in football, any team that makes mistakes is punished. I expect that we will have a very tough match [on Saturday] especially from them as they have almost all the players who played last time and we have released some of the senior players, but we will see how we will play them. It’s a cup game where you need to do whatever it takes to come out with a result.”
On players who will not be part of the team due to injuries…
“We have some of the guys who were injured last year and some of them didn’t play even a single game, especially Precious Sambani, John Lanjesi and Righteous Banda. We are not in a hurry to throw them in although now chances are 40 to 50 percent that they are coming up, but we need them to be fully fit before we start playing them.”
