The Sunday News
Kallisto Pasuwa
FIRST I would want to apologise sincerely to the nation for the results we got in Rwanda, we also wanted to win and the nation was anticipating that but sadly it didn’t work out well for us.
When we go to work nobody goes with the aim to fail, we all go with the aim of doing well. Naturally after such a poor outing people talk, they are entitled to talk.
It’s normal. Everybody expected us to win but unfortunately most people don’t look at where we are coming from, how we started the project and what we want to achieve.
I can’t decide my future, whether I continue or I leave, because this one rests with the association, the employer. They are the ones who make decisions and we have to accept the decisions they make.
However, I feel it is important to highlight some issues that are suddenly being raised in some circles after our disappointing outing in Rwanda. One such issue has to do with my assistant coaches.
I feel they are getting unfair criticism, they work hard and we have worked well together since the day I was appointed national team coach. Operating under difficult conditions we managed to qualify for the Chan tournament as well as the Africa Games.
Those achievements show that as a technical team we work well together. I don’t understand why their credentials are being questioned now, why weren’t they questioned when we were winning? Maybe we are never supposed to lose but this is football.
As members of the technical team we love our country and would like to see the Warriors doing well. It is that patriotism that sees us sacrificing a lot, for instance some coaches would have not travelled to Rwanda without a contract but I did.
Why? I travelled because doing the job was certainly more important than the issue of the contract, there was need to concentrate on the job at hand hence I decided to travel without finalising that issue.
Results might have not come our way but we came back home having learnt some valuable lessons, lessons that will make us a better team. Usually in a match you want to retain possession and search for spaces in the opponent’s defence, and then you want to vary and change to high tempo depending on the situation.
But then in most cases we tended to play with no variation. However, as the matches progressed you could notice the change and adjustments in our play.
Keeping possession is very important and I would say we did well in that aspect but you can’t just keep possession for the sake of it.
A major lesson we got from there is if you get a chance at such tournaments you have to bury the opponent. If you look at all our matches we got several chances while the opponents had very few but we would spend the whole day squandering the chances while they buried theirs.
But amid this disappointment we have to look to the future with hope. We are scheduled to meet with Zifa and as the coach I am ready for whatever decision, the team should always comes first.
Warriors coach Kallisto Pasuwa was speaking to our Harare Bureau on Friday on the performance of the Warriors in the Chan tournament in Rwanda.
