National Sports

Ndawa says loss to Nomads painful

Silver Strikers coach Franco Ndawa has conceded that losing to his former team Mighty Wanderers in the final of the Standard Bank Knockout Trophy finals on Saturday was painful.

“I should admit that it was a painful defeat for the obvious reason that we lost to my former team. I would have been the happiest had we won,” said Ndawa in an interview from Lilongwe yesterday.

He also said the missed penalty by Mustafa Salimu affected the morale of his charges.

“I cannot blame him (Mustafa) for the loss because penalties are a lottery, you score or miss. But somehow it affected our rhythm. Anyway, congratulations to Wanderers, they deserved to win,” he said.

Ndawa was fired by Nomads two months ago following a string of poor results and his deputies Felix Fosco and Albert ‘Kika’ Mpinganjira took over the mantle.

Victor Mpinganjira, who coincidentally was celebrating his 18th birthday struck the first goal 37 minutes into the first-half before national soccer team stand-in captain Moses Chavula added the second in the 84th minute after being thrown in as a substitute.

It was Chavula’s first game after being cleared by the South African Football Association (Safa).

Nomads general secretary David Kanyenda claimed that the mind games over the venue prior to the game worked to their advantage.

“We pretended we did not want to play the game, yet our players were training twice a day since Monday,” claimed Kanyenda.

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