FCB Nyasa Big Bullets Reserves suffered their second defeat in the last eight of the 2024 ThumbsUp Southern Region Football League at the hands of Mighty Wanderers Reserves, who emerged 1-0 winners at the Mpira Stadium on Thursday afternoon.
After a goalless opening half, Blessing Saiti won it for the young Nomads later in the second half.
What happened
From the start, the two sides played a cagey game, reserving pace when going forward and lacking creativity.
Having already met three times in high-scoring fixtures this season, the two young rivals would be too careful about each other that the first half of their latest meeting would wind down with no shot on target except Mussah Bwanali’s heading effort which got cleared off the goal line to deny us a lead.
After the interval, Enos Chatama replaced Francis Malikebu with Sladge Sanudi and right away doubled our dominance as we went on to fashion a series of chances which we fluffed again.
After 67 minutes of football, the hosts pushed up the pitch in one of their rare attacks and Blessings Saiti found himself in a good goal-scoring position and made it count with a strike which took a deflection off Bwanali on its way in.
What followed was a show of our youngsters trying their best to stage a come back by claiming larger ball possession.
Madalisto Safuli, Hadji Steven and Kondwani Tebulo were later introduced to replace Raphick Bahati, Zaneel Jussab and Andrew Lameck.
Nonetheless, the young Nomads’ resilience remained unbroken and the clock ran down quickly. In the end, it was a 1-0 victory for Wanderers in the Blantyre mini-derby.
What it means
After Thursday’s defeat, we remain in third position with the points still 19 now after 20 games.
Beating us for the first time in the league in a decade, the young Nomads are sixth in the standings.
Chatama’s post-match reaction
“The boys were complacent; they were over-confident. We have beaten Wanderers for quite so long, they came with the heart that we were going to win this one but we lost. We were the dominant team for the entire 90 minutes. We created chances [but] we never utilized them. They scored a lucky goal and won 1-0. All in all, congrats to Wanderers, they scored with their only chance of the tie and defended so well.”
Looking ahead
After two back-to-back away fixtures, our youngsters will now shift focus to their home assignment against Ndirande Stars next Tuesday afternoon.
