Kalisto Pasuwa spoke to Nyasa Big Bullets Media on Sunday afternoon ahead of The People’s Team’s TNM Super League action against Mighty Tigers at Mpira Stadium in Chiwembe on Monday.
The match comes 48-hours after Bullets defeating visiting Mzuzu Warriors 3-0 at kamuzu Stadium on Saturday.
The head coach was quizzed about his team’s recovery plan and overall management of his players, his opponents, and his assessment of the youngsters who have graduated from Bullets Reserve to the first-team and were used against Mzuzu Warriors.
Here is every word from Pasuwa during Sunday’s pre-match interview:
Coach, you are playing Mighty Tigers, 48-hours after playing another TNM Super League game, take us through the preparations and possibly tell us about the recovery and overall management of the team?
“Yeah so far so good. The boys are doing the recovery part of it and this morning they had a walk, in the mid-morning they had to do a flexiology then this evening we had to do light training as part of recovery to some of the boys who played against Mzuzu Warriors. To the guys who didn’t play on Saturday, they trained and we tried to push them up in order to catch up with the rest of the boys.”
You are playing a side which you previously beat during a friendly match a fortnight ago, what sort of a match are you expecting from Monday’s opponents?
“We are playing a good team tomorrow and all the games that we have been playing them they came so close to making things very difficult for us. These are also the boys that are so eager to win in every game they play against us. We have been talking to our boys, a game is not easy until the final whistle. We played them in a friendly match and to some of the boys, they were not training and we wouldn’t take much of that since it was just a training match where you try different players and combinations, but again, the intensity against us especially in the first half was very good hence the need to do more in order to get a result against them.”
Do you have any fresh injuries?
“As of now, we have our captain John Lanjesi who played 65 minutes of Saturday’s match and he is coming from an injury which kept him out of action for too long, so we have to monitor him before throwing him into the action for 90 minutes again.”
Yesterday, during the game against Mzuzu Warriors, you used two youngsters who are coming from the Reserve side; Blessings Mpokera played the entire 90 minutes and Lanjesi Nkhoma came on in the second half, were you impressed with their performance?
“These are youngsters who are coming in, especially this boy Blessings Mpokera who played the entire 90 minutes and did very well. His passing rate was very good and of course at times, he struggled a bit to win some duels but he was good and we hope for the better in his future if he doesn’t go the other side of his behavior, but as coaches, we are here to monitor him and to manage him until he gets there.”
