| A narrow escape from Valencia
25 March 2006
Uploaded: 12:00 PM
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MALDIVES - Valencia won by a narrow margin against second division's Maaziya. Without six of their best players, with three injured and three suspended due to yellow cards, Valencia was left unorganized and their concentration was record low. It was Maaziya who dominated the first half, with counter attacks and created open chances.
Gassan was creating chance by chances through long balls and low passes. But to the despair none of the chances went inside the goal. The most open chance was for Maumoon who struck it wide from the goal.
Valencia who was lacking any momentum, was awarded a goal, when Farhan's shot near the edge of the penalty area went straight to the corner of the goal. Keeper Murthala had no chance to save the goal.
The next goal which was scored in the 45 th minute by Sunain from a rebounded ball when Farhan shot another long distance shot.
In the second half, Valencia tried with more determination and tried to increase their lead. Azim(Andy) who was left out from an injury during practice came in during this half and created a lot of chances. But it was Maaziya who scored in the dying minutes of the second half from a shot by Ibrahim Latheef.
It was school boy stuff: Eric
After the match, Eric Williams, the head coach of Valencia was full of praise for the Maaziya players.
“They had the determination and the enthusiasm to win. They were fighting till the final whistle and you could see it from their goal'
Eric said that their players need to do lot of hard work if they want to progress in the upcoming matches.
‘They need to do a lot of hard work if they want to win”
When asked by maldivesoccer regarding the poor concentration, Eric agreed that he also felt it. But before the match, in the dressing room he had put in the notice board a big heading “Attitude”.
“Without attitude especially against the second division clubs, we will not progress. It happens all over the world. Not only here”
Meanwhile Eric explained why he rotates the keepers for the matches.
“I am not happy with the keepers so far. They aren't doing enough work wearing the shirt. Timo who came this year has failed. And now I gave chance to Habeeb and today it was school boy stuff from him. A ball where he tried to punch went over him”
The score doesn't matter at all: Imma
Mahfooz, (Imma) stated that he is very happy with the game.
‘Of course we did not win the game. But I take this game as a win as we played well and missed lot of chances. We were better than one of the best teams in Maldives . So I am very happy with the players”
Imma also explained that the game would be different if they could have scored from the early chances in the first half.
“The score line might be different if we could have scored from the first few chances. We got 4 to 5 open chances to score and we could not”
A red card was shown after the match to Hussain Rasheed by referee Abeer. According to Maziya players, the referee showed the red for verbally abusing him. But he showed to a wrong player.
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