Pasuwa to lead Malawi at Cosafa Cup tournament

THE Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has appointed Kalisto Pasuwa as the Malawi Under-23 national team coach, according to reports from that country.

Malawian publication “The Nation” reported that FAM will send the Under-23 side to this year’s edition of the Cosafa Cup in South Africa and Pasuwa will be in charge of the team.

The Cosafa Cup tournament will be played next month with the final schedule still to be finalised.

Last year, Pasuwa was rumoured to be the front-runner for the Malawi senior national team job but nothing materialised in the end.

It is reported that Pasuwa, who is head coach at the reigning Malawian Premier League champions Nyasa Big Bullets coach, will assume the role with immediate effect.

Pasuwa was recently linked with the Zimbabwe senior national team job but is said to have turned down an offer from the Zifa Normalisation Committee.

As a result, the job was given to Manica Diamonds coach, Jairos Tapera who will be in charge of the World Cup qualifying games and the Cosafa Cup.

Pasuwa has been excelling as a coach in Malawi. The Zimbabwean gaffer, who coaches Nyasa Big Bullets, won the Non-Citizen of the Year award at the 2023 Malawi Sports Awards at the beginning of the year.

Pasuwa beat the competition of the other two nominees, Arjun Menon of Cricket Malawi and Priyasha Santosh Shyrian of Malawi Chess Federation.

He became the first coach in decades to win the TNM Super League for a fifth consecutive season.

He also retained the FDH Bank Cup for the second successive year in a season, while also winning the inaugural Castel Challenge Cup and reclaimed the Airtel Top Eight to complete a quadruple.

The former Dynamos and Warriors coach also won the Charity Shield for the sixth year in a row.

Meanwhile, Cosafa is set to embark on an exciting new era with the acquisition of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) equipment to both roll out at its tournaments and use as a teaching tool for training purposes for match officials on the continent.

Cosafa is now in possession of the equipment and will have it used in the later stages of the men’s senior Cosafa Cup set for June.

After a successful pilot project last year at the Cosafa Women’s Championship, the aim is now to have VAR at all Cosafa events in the future. But the system will also be used to train referees, which is becoming vital with Caf and Fifa requiring licenced VAR operators at their events.—@innocentskizoe