Kalisto Pasuwa provided his reaction to our 3-0 win over Chitipa United in the TNM Super League at Karonga Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Babatunde Adepoju’s 23rd-minute strike gave The People’s Team a 1-0 lead at the break before Ephraim Kondowe and Patrick Mwaungulu completed our mission on the waterlogged pitch late in the final period.
In his post-match interview, our head coach told journalists that Bullets were made to work extra hard due to the condition of the muddy pitch in Karonga.
“Firstly, I would like to talk about the condition of the pitch. Yes, we won, but we can’t allow this to continue. We are here for two games, and then we play on such a waterlogged surface. The players were made to work extra hard on a very bad playing surface.
“We need to do more in terms of the grounds in which we are playing. We need to improve so that we can have good football so that we practice what we are going to see when we play in the Champions League. This pitch is terrible and not good for football players,” reacted Pasuwa.
Analysing the game, the Zimbabwean said: “The opponents started very well by pressing us in the opening minutes by playing a very fast game, but our goal unsettled them and in the second half, we completely took over from them in the midfield where we were running all over and controlled the game. The boys rose to the occasion to win under such difficult circumstances.”
The 2023 quadruple-winning coach paid special tribute to his second-half substitutes who tormented the opposition to score two goals in three minutes to seal our first victory of the season.
“The second-half substitutes did well tactically by making life very difficult for the opponents and we scored two more goals to seal the win. They followed the instructions and made sure that everything ended well for us.”
Commenting on the first victory of our TNM Super League in Matchweek 3 this campaign, Pasuwa said there was no cause for panic.
“Like I always say, this is a marathon. We will play 30 games and we take each game as it comes. We can’t look much into those two draws because half of the team was not available due to illness and we were forced to use Innocent Nyasulu in this match despite being sick and his fellow goalkeeper Richard Chimbamba is also sick. These are some of the challenges that we are facing, but we have to play and that’s what we did today.”
