Traditional arch-patriarchs of the domestic game are poised to set the 2025 TNM Super league season alight at the now defacto Malawi’s Soccer Mecca, Bingu National Stadium.
Football action drought finally eclipses its unexciting shadows, paving way to the usual ecstasy and frenzy that the most followed sport brings.
The master bakers at Super League of Malawi, have not disappointed either, at the earliest they bring on the soccer table, the finest of their triple-distilled chateau of football.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is Silver Strikers versus FCB Nyasa Big Bullets, whose gap in quality, isn’t a disparity.
In attaining the accolade of title defenders, and deservedly so, Silver Strikers finished their successful campaign with unassailable 67 points, winning 19 games, drawing 10 and narrowly lost one game the entire season.
FCB Nyasaland surrendered their streak title mantle in uncharacteristic fashion, if their previous prowess was anything to factor, winning 14 games drawing 7 and beaten three times and finishing third with 55 points.
Silver strikers, they, themselves deserved winners of the previous edition, having gigantically tussled to nearly win the accolade unbeaten, goes into the match as clear favourites.
To cement their case, they saw off resistance from Mighty Wanderers last Saturday, to write their names on the FAM Charity Shield, a season goodwill curtain raiser match.
Despite changing the technical dynamics, having lost Coach Peter Mponda to arch-rivals FCB Nyasa Big Bullets, newly recruited Coach, Peter Mgangira, is to the least not a novice of Silver Strikers Football.
At the rise and fall of his playing career, he has been a banker, and lately joined its technical ranks and files.
A shake-up in the technical set-up will surely not ring any alarming bells, soonest.
Fairly though, Mgangira and his backroom staff will have to contain the pressure of title retention, amidst the pleasure and lust of ‘Bankers’ contingent of admirers, who accepts and demand nothing less.
In almost similar patterns, coach Peter Mponda returns to a club, whose image cannot be taken out the equation of his long football career, in active playing to technical trade fairytale, lately.
He has shown on numerous stages that he is a charismatic gaffer who fiercely commands his troops to deliver.
He now returns to an acre that made him write some special lines of his career, now seated on the opposing technical benches.
It will be seen, if his stint with the Bankers will work to his rare advantaging in snatching all the three points or a single digit from the stars of area 47.
Or will it be Mgangira who will outwit his former boss in making him sniff gun powder from his own barrel?
A highly contested affair that will put into proper furrows toddlers and men of age. The odds, by calibration of statistics and recent form, highly favour, Peter Mgangira, as it pities, Peter Mponda. A season opener that will be!
