FCB Nyasa Big Bullets head coach Kalisto Pasuwa says the only way for his charges to perform well in the CAF Champions League is to avoid mistakes that they did in their previous Champions League matches.
In six seasons, the Malawi Champions have only managed to pass through the first preliminary round once when they beat Equatorial Guinea’s Dragon FC in the 2023/24 season.
Now, they will face Zambia’s Red Arrows in the first preliminary round match where they will start at home before flying to Zambia for the return leg.
Speaking through Bullets media soon after the draw, Pasuwa said failure to address the problems would see his team failing to go past the Zambian side where the winner will play TP Mazembe in the final preliminary stage where the winner will make it to the group stages.
“A draw where we were expecting anything. Remember, we are a non-rent so we were expecting any team. We are meeting Red Arrows from Zambia. These are also teams that are good and we can’t underrate any team because this is the Champions League.
“We have been playing Champions League and I think we have learned a lot of lessons where we need to solve those problems first because if we don’t solve them, we will end up doing the same issues and if you can see the route that we are going, it is the same route that we took last time where we played teams from Guinea then TP Mazembe.
“If we manage to go past Red Arrows, we will go against TP Mazembe so, we need to prepare well for us to do good. Any small mistake that you make in the Champions League, you are punished and if you saw our last game in this competition, we scored inside the first 20 minutes, and after conceding, the boys played excellent football.
“We need to work on these areas to say what is it that makes us lose concentration in the early stages of the game, but, these are mind games that we also need to be very careful with, and at this level, no mistakes,” he said.
On whether starting at home will be an advantage to his charges, the tactician said: “We just need to be ready for these games. Prepare yourself to play away or at home. Yes, we would have loved to firstly start away from home and then play the second leg at home but again that’s how the draw is, we just need to prepare and avoid mistakes so that we go past these teams,” he explained.
Bullets’ opponents are the current defending champions of Zambia’s Premier League after finishing the 2023/24 season with 71 points, 12 ahead of the second-placed Zesco United.
In the Champions League, they have never gone beyond the second preliminary round after they were knocked out in the second preliminary round in the 2005 season.
In the 2021/22 season, they were knocked out of the competition in the first preliminary round.
They also participated in the Confederations Cup where they were eliminated in the Round of 16 in 2005 and preliminary stage in 2012.
