Kalisto Pasuwa was back in front of the club media ahead of Wednesday afternoon’s TNM Super League fixture against Civil Service United at Civo Stadium.
This is FCB Nyasa Big Bullets’ final league fixture away from the Southern Region this term following our goalless stalemate against Silver Strikers on Saturday when our title defence ended after we had clinched the league championship for five consecutive seasons.
The head coach discussed the preparations for Civil, our failure to defend the championship, lessons learned from the current campaign, and his expectations facing the Servants midweek.
Read on to get exactly what Pasuwa said during his briefing.
On our preparations for the midweek game
On the game that we are playing, yes, we should be fully prepared. I have told the boys that every one of them should be ready for it. Yes, these are the games that are coming. We can’t do anything. We need to fulfil the fixture. So, having played Silver [on Saturday] in which we got a point, we also need to go and be positive to come up with a better result. Civil is a team that needs not to be underrated. A team that wouldn’t just give you points without sweating for them. You need to be tactically good to collect points away from them. You have seen them when we play against them in Blantyre. They give us torrid times. It’s something that we need to knock sense into our boys to work hard against one of the best teams in Malawi, which is tactically good when they are approaching us. We know that we have been playing them, we know their weaknesses, they know ours, we know their strengths, and they know our strengths as well, so we need to see the individualism of the players on how they can tackle this game.
On challenges the 2023 quadruple winners faced this campaign
The problem has been travelling. We also had many games in the shortest period without enough recovery for the players. Yes, it’s not to say we were not supposed to be playing, but the travelling part of it affected us. Coming to the last game we played, yes, we had some of the boys also being cautioned. There are some of the cautions that are pre-arranged when you go into the game, having been told that Bullets will receive a red card, and for sure, you will see a red card being given. I am wondering what is happening in our football, but it happened, and that’s water under the bridge.
On what went wrong for his team to fail to defend the championship
Maybe it’s for someone else to know, and until now, I am a surprised person, and if people can see the way we started, the fixture part of it where we played the first game away from home and we were told that after playing Dedza, the next one was at home then we went to the North where we were told that we would play two games. We won one, and as we were preparing for the second game, the fixture changed to say we were returning to Blantyre to play a game. I am not saying they shouldn’t be changing [fixtures], but again, these are some of the things that I think affected [us] a lot in terms of how we were travelling. Remember, we played in the CAF Champions League, and the games were coming through thick and thin on us. We were told to play games in a space of two days, and you tend to wonder if it was worth it to play in the Champions League and then participate in league matches when an important assignment was awaiting us. Then, also in other factors, I am one person who was also surprised to say a team can lose form in two months to say Bullets had won everything last season, and all of a sudden, we slumbered and we even failed to pick up points at home which is one strange thing. I tried to look at it to say where we were making mistakes, but again, we soldiered on, and we started picking up points unfortunately, now that we can’t defend the championship, but so far, so good for the boys. Remember, we started with injuries and all the boys are now fit; they came back when we were in the second half of the season, but I am happy for them and maybe the position where we are, I think we have done well as compared to how we started because we couldn’t think that we could finish on third position [or second]. It was a case of saying maybe we could finish in position 11 or 12 in the standings.
On Bullets’ failure to convert chances into goals
You see, like I am telling you, to correct, a mistake is called a mistake when it’s done three times. We were given two days to play, we played Silver, and again, we are playing another game without even making those corrections. Now, in football, I think these are boys who are learning. They also need to be given time and you saw the way they were missing, it was the technique part of it inside the penalty box where they could go into the right positions of attack but the technique part of it to put the ball into the net was a big problem, which needs more repetitions for one to correct himself, but we don’t have the time, we have to correct it, and we hope they can improve when we face Civil.
On missing out on the sixth league title
Football being football, the problem which I saw in our camp is complacency. When you do well this year, you need to come very much more than what you achieved. In a professional setup, we talk about these big teams. The way we prepared ourselves in 2018 mustn’t be the same way to prepare for the season in 2019. You need to improve in whatever you are doing or even the setup that you are supposed to approach your season. It must be an improved one. So, in us, we took it to say we are used to winning these championships, but in football, it’s not like that, we need to improve on everything including the way we manage our football, the way the players are or even us as coaches, we need also to learn more for us to go to another level for us to also improve the Malawian football. But like this year, we saw the bad side of officiating because we won everything last year and I even asked myself if it was a crime for my team to win every single trophy last season because of the way they were handling our matches, but that’s football, I have learnt a lesson and I need to go to the drawing board and see where I got it wrong.
On our approach to the remaining four league games
I am one person who takes every game seriously. We try to grind results in every game we play, so we are not changing the way we play because the championship is gone. We need to keep up the momentum and remember people pay money to watch beautiful football with positive results, and the way that we finish this year will also convince our supporters to come back to football next season.
On whether we had a poor pre-season or not
I mustn’t be talking much. I am a coach, and I know you can be talking negatives, but I think everyone saw it, and I know everyone in our camp knows how we camped. Like I said, for one to do good, you need to improve on everything that you do or even the approach, but the moment you think that everything will work to your advantage because you are Bullets, then it will affect you by the end of the day because this is football. You see, even Manchester City is dropping points week in, and week out, but they are professionals and at the end of the season, they try to push up and get everything right. [And], on our side, now I think we need to improve on a lot of things to push more on our level of football. You saw we have been going into the Champions League, and we are not pushing up to go to the next round as we are always knocked out in the preliminary stages by making mistakes or officiating errors, but we need to improve for us to move forward.
