Mafco FC prolific striker, Calisto Kalinda, returned to action last Saturday after a season\u2019s absence due to military assignments in the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n
Kalinda is among a contingent of the Salima-based soldiers\u2019 players who are back with the team after being deployed in the war-torn country for peacekeeping exercises.<\/p>\n
But the 2015 TNM Super League second top goal scorer had a match to forget as he was stretchered off the pitch in the 12th minute due to a hamstring injury in a 1-1 draw against Dwangwa United at Chitowe in Dwangwa on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Mafco coach Temwa Msuku said the players\u2019 return is a major boost to his league and cup campaigns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were improvising in most of the positions as we had a depleted squad. So their coming is great news to us. We will now have a deep squad which will give us plenty of options.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe development also means that there will be stiff competition for positions among the players and the result will be improved performance,\u201d Msuku said.<\/p>\n
The soldiers were the first to score on Saturday and they gave away a Kingsley Nkhonjera 37th minute lead to share a point each with their fellow lakeshore side, Dwangwa United, who scored through Josephat Kwalira.<\/p>\n
Mafco are seventh on the log table with 11 points from seven games, just a point behind leaders Red Lions.<\/p>\n
They have been struggling to score goals as their goal difference remains at -2, having conceded 10 goals and scoring eight.<\/p>\n
The soldiers were among the five teams that staged a tense fight for the league title towards the end of last season.<\/p>\n
It is yet to be seen if at all the return of Kalinda and other players will help the team improve its standing on the log table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mafco FC prolific striker, Calisto Kalinda, returned to action last Saturday after a season\u2019s absence due to military assignments in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kalinda is among a contingent of the Salima-based soldiers\u2019 players who are back with the team after being deployed in the war-torn country for peacekeeping exercises. But the 2015 TNM […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49304,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49299\/revisions\/49304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}