A shocking defeat to Maldives

You can lose a match but this was near thrashing. First of all, changing defensive lineup for every other match did not help us. Secondly media interview with half of the team one day before match was a bad strategy that should not have been allowed. Elsewhere in the world also people do take interviews from captain but not half the squad. It is no secret the importance of shielding players from the prying eyes of media as we all know what happen when the players are under too much scrutiny and media attention. Players poor performance was heavily contributed by a strategic blunder by the media and coach’s ever-changing defensive lineup.

It took 17 year to Nepal to win against Maldives.After 28 month Nepal won the match and entered in final by long period of time.Gorkhali were well in play but due to match fixing Nepal goes down in 196th rank in FIFA.So Maldivian should play with full of patriotism rather than for economy then only they get sucess.Maldive is strong team in south asian so government of Maldives should adopt new for welfare of football small paradise.Maldives must takes some steps.

Nepal has always played with flair through out the last couple of years and we're just unlucky in most games. Congratulation to their young team. It's time we need to dig deep and find out exactly what happened. This could take time correct, but I feel part of this was due to not concentrating on youth development and allowing them to excel. Ever since likes of oppo, ali Umar, dhagey and imran started representing the country as teenagers or in their early twenties, we never allowed other young players to even try. Now 15 years after they debuted we are trying to change the whole squad overnight and this will not happen. Even now we have only about four players whom we can call young. Keeper Faisal is past 27, lily, naate, Easa,adey, sentey are too old to be considered for our Olympic side. So even if we loose I hope the coach takes a squad which is below age of 20 to the saff games and build on it. Use the same squad for remaining two games of World Cup qualifying and get couple of friendlies for them too. We don't win with the experienced players so why not at least loose while trying to build our future. Wishing and praying brighter days for maldivian football.

shame. its time to resign our coach. we want back coach of our glory days. i knew u cant do this coach.. pls pls change the coach #fam

Unfortunately I have a feeling that this is a sign of times to come once Ashfaq retires from soccer. For sure those games that we won by a huge margin only a while back, without him even if we win would be with a goal or two difference. Sadly we have not been able to create anyone even close to his caliber.

Let's face it, we can't play football. For me, problem lies with FAM. You can sack the coach but it want produce the results you are expecting if you don't address the root cause. they have no strategies , no vision, no plans, even no interest in this sport, they are there, because of charity funds donated by rich Arab countries.What we call Siyaasee actually is selfishness.

Two shocking defeats in two tournaments: against Afghanistan in SAFF (4-1) and against Nepal (4-1). Afghan's win was their first win against us and Nepal's one their biggest ever and first since 1999. So, questions have to be asked about technical and tactical preparation for the matches and how effective is the decision-making before and during the match. To me, it's clear this is not only about players. Having said that, I'm convinced that we still need Dhagey, Bakaa and Imran. In a semi-final match, they would have made a difference but the overall impression is the Herbert's made some wrong decisions for whatever the reason in this semi-final. Since Bhutan's match, we haven't seen any real team play or good possession of the ball. We need our top 3 players in the starting line-up for the South Asian Games and specially for the upcoming WC qualifiers.

This will go down as one of the bleakest period of Maldives football. Lost against Nepal for the first time since 1999, lost the record of not losing to Afghanistan, lost against India in the semi third time in a row. You can it a phycological rout, but our performance does not suggest we are anything more than semi final material. With each of these tournament our 2008 triumph appears more like a fluke.

better to send a local coach to saffgames

shame on this performance, nepal was the only competitive team so far maldives faced result 4-1, thank you very much world cup coach ricki herbert

Nepal has doing things right for couple of years and they are getting the results.Congratulations Nepal. while we change coaches every year and bring in new coaches just when tournament is starting. We need a local coach to build a youth team which will go on to be senior team in due time. We should not sideline senior players at their prime. we need some one who can get results from senior players. Senior team should not be dismantled for building a new team.

we have played like 80's. defeating is completely a different issue, but playing strategy was horrible. what i could understand from the match was, no strategic plan and complete chaos. almost everyone was wondering around like waltzing mice. Sorry Coach!

There is no such thing as "Developing a young team" when it comes to National Team. We have to pick the strongest possible line up every time. Ricky Herbert is wrong on this one. You develop new players with clubs not National Teams because in clubs you get enough games to develop players. In a National side where games are few and far between, you have to go with the best possible team every time. Playing a young player if he is good enough is another matter.

Nepal played with passion. they ran with the ball.. they ran without the ball.. we were too lazy to run.. i believe that a 3-5-3 formation would better suit us if we are not too lazy to run...

I think it's typical that most ignorant fans are calling for the coach's head once again. We have had a variety of different coaches since winning the SAFF Championship in 2008, but after seeing one failure after the other, people still haven't learned. The problem lies with the bodies responsible for developing Maldivian sport. But here, I will just focus on our football. I just read a very well-written piece on Haveeru regarding the plight of our football and the reasons for why we're here today. Firstly, FAM does not have a clear plan of what they want to achieve. Sure, just a week before every SAFF Championship, they boast about how we're aiming to win it before ultimately falling short at the semifinals. In contrast, India, Afghanistan, Nepal and even Bangladesh have a firm plan. India and Afghanistan are now both miles ahead of us. Nepal have invested heavily in their youth and their U-16 team played in the U-16 Asian Cup last year. Many players from that team were involved in this thrashing. Us? We did not even participate in the U-16 qualifiers for unknown reasons. Our U-16, U-19 teams are routinely thrashed at junior level SAFF Championships as well and I fear that this is what's going to happen to our national team in a few years. Unless of course, FAM creates a firm masterplan and decide to stick with it. I understand that they made one, which was presented by the Normalization Committee last year. The plan included expanding the league format of the top 3 divisions to include greater participation of non-Male' regions, as well as starting up youth academies for all DPL clubs and also to include the U-19 and U-16 teams in divisions 2 and 3 respectively. However, how much of these plans have come to fruition? How much work is done to enable these grand schemes? I think the footballing family needs to ask themselves this: Do we continue doing things as they were and sack the coach and blame everything on him again, or do we actually do something to improve the whole footballing infrastructure from the ground up? And what happened to the South Korean Technical Director's plan that was presented a few years ago? Why is FAM's current Technical Department so incompetent, and what are they actually doing there while taking home their fat salaries every month? All critical questions that need to be answered. They may have fooled us fans in the past, but we can no longer be deceived by just mere words. We want to see action, not just waxing lyrical about how good Ashfaq and the new youngster is. We want to see our clubs as forces to be reckoned with in AFC club competitions, and a national team that has the quality to scare even the established giants of the continent.

Y faisal? Where is ifrah, athif!!!!!

Maldives' main problems come from the lack of professionality of their main players. It is widely known that they smoke, they conceive themselves as Gods and don't have proper feeding, don't train enough in the gym, tactically are very poor, local coaches have very little knowledge of tacticts, training methodologies, etc. Riki has only little more. When you face these problems and start educating children as sportmen, then after a few years you will have a chance to do something in football