NAPSA Stars Football Club Head Coach Perry Mutapa has previewed his team’s week-10 match of the MTN Super League to be played against Buildcon FC.
NAPSA Stars visits Buildcon at Trade Fair Ground tomorrow for this match. The Ndola based side is yet to register a victory in the league, with coach Perry saying this is one of the tricky matches for his side facing a team that is looking for their first victory,
The Coach was speaking during a pre-match Press Briefing held via zoom with the media earlier this morning.
Here is what the coach had to say;
What are your expectations from this match?
It’s going to be a tough game considering that Buildcon are looking for their first win, so it won’t be easy. But as NAPSA Stars, we are coming from a win; we have the momentum, so we would like to continue on that path, so it will be a difficult encounter. But we are geared for this game.
How are your boys treating this particular match looking at how you will face a team which is yet to win a match, are you working on avoiding any complacency?
That has been the song for this week because we are different people with different mentality. We have both experienced and young players so I feel it’s the job for the experienced players to help us the technical bench to keep on talking to the young ones to avoid this, but it has been the song for this week because we know Buildcon want to win as well. It’s not like they have given up. So we are taking this game seriously and reminding the boys that they can only win the game after the 90 plus minutes.
What has driven NAPSA Stars to remain relevant as at week nine, you have managed to beat teams like Warriors and ZESCO United, what has been the inspiration behind this performance?
This is the super league and if you don’t treat each match differently and seriously then you are bound to go down to the first division. We are coming from the National Division and no one at the Club wants to go back there. So the most important thing is to concentrate and forget about the past result because we are not yet the best and we have the potential to do better than what we have done. So we are just taking each game as it comes, and our main concern is to beat the mark of dropping down to the lower division.
Any injury concerns going into tomorrow’s game?
Austin Banda is missing from the team after picking an injury in training. He took part in the last game but we won’t have him for this match.
The objective when you kicked off the league was to remain in the top flight and not go back to Division One, but now that you are in the top four, does this change your game plan to maybe wanting to win the league ?
This is just week-10. I think the league is still in its early days. The difference between the team on top and that on number 13 is very minimal, so there’s nothing to get carried away with; we just need to take each game as it comes.
You have had a very good record at home as compared to that away, what are you doing to change this away record?
This is one of the first away games which we are going to play having the last three results positive. So we are hoping that these results help in changing fortunes in this match tomorrow.
How tricky is it face Buildcon who have not won any match this season especially that everyone thinks it’s going to be an easy game for you?
Very tricky everyone thinks it will be a walk in the park. They will want to start winning and this is always tricky because they are looking at that first win. But we also want to start picking up points more especially away from home.
You said you want to ensure you don’t drop to the lower league, and you are at a very important position, how import is it that you maintain where you are especially that you are not far from teams at the top?
That why we don’t want to lose this momentum because it’s very encouraging, but like I also said, we are not so far from the team that is on number 13. We want to keep this momentum; if we do it then we attain the target set for the first half. But this is football and your next game is always important so the Buildcon game is very important and a positive result will make us realize the dream of attaining the results we want to attain in the first round of games.
Three wins in the last five games, do you think your team has jelled?
We still have some work to do, and I believe even if it’s three wins in the last five games, I think in the games we have played in the last nine games, we have never had a bad performance, only bad results. So going forward we are still trying to jell and the best is yet to come.
Coming at a fast pace, lot of games in the short period, how is the condition of players?
Of course, last week was not ok, but that is why we have about 30 players registered. We need to manage the, and I think we will be fresh this week. Of course, we were worried about the last game against Warriors because of the Solwezi trip we had and coming straight to face a big team like ZESCO United, playing a high intensity game, so it got a lot of energy from the guys. So, coming into this game, we are happy because even the training sessions, we tried to manage knowing that the last week was not easy for the guys. So we will be fresher this weekend as compared to last weekend.