Yanga’s Head of Media and Communications, Ali Kamwe, has thanked the club’s members and fans who travelled to Malawi to motivate their team in yesterday’s CAF Champions League match against Silver Strikers at Bingu Stadium.
Kamwe said those fans demonstrated Yanga’s stature in the East African region by filling Bingu Stadium in larger numbers than even the home fans of Silver Strikers.
The spokesman of the league champions said he understands the pain fans felt after failing to win yesterday, but assured them that they will make good use of the return leg to reach the group stage.
Through his Instagram page, Kamwe wrote this message:
“Yesterday, we the fans did our job. For the first time Malawians witnessed an away team having more fans in the stands than the home team.
They had never seen this before — not even in their national team games. Yesterday was the first time they saw a BIG CLUB FROM EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA dominate the stands.
Unfortunately for us, the 90 minutes did not bring joy. We lost 1–0 and left the stadium humbled.
I know how painful it was after the match.
With our big numbers in the stadium, with fans travelling a long distance from Tanzania all the way to Malawi, our expectation was to get joy yesterday.
But that is football.
Yesterday’s 90 minutes are gone — but our joy in this Champions League season is not gone. We still have another 90 minutes at home.
Our target is to reach the group stage.
The worst thing now would be to keep our heads down and get stuck analysing yesterday, only to lose focus on preparing for the home match.
Let us not allow that, Wananchi. Let us begin preparations now — street by street, branch by branch — to make sure we take our team to the group stage.
Let us storm the return leg against Silver Strikers in the biggest way possible.
And the good thing is: in knockout football, the most important thing is to advance to the group stage, not the result of one away match.
Let us turn yesterday’s pain into the fuel for a strong COMEBACK on Saturday at Mkapa Stadium.”
