FAM terminates contract with Herbert

Jun 05, 2016 - 12:08:06 | Shimaaz Ali
Ricki Herbert, FAM has terminated his contract on mutual consent. (MS Photo: Ibrahim Faid)

Male’, MALDIVES – Football Association of Maldives has terminated the contract with national team coach Ricki Herbert on mutual consent after the poor results during the last seven months.

In a press conference held at FAM House today, President Ahmed Thariq said that it was the best solution for both parties.

“For the time being it was the best solution. We had a meeting with Coach Herbert and he also wanted to find a solution for this.” Thariq said.

“I would like to thank Ricki Herbert for his service to the Maldives football.”

Under the reign of Ricki Herbert Maldives played 19 games in all completions including FIFA World Cup qualifiers and SAFF Championship and won only 7 games. Maldives lost 11 games while managed to get a draw against Bahrain U23 in Bangabandhu Gold Cup. The most surprising defeat under Ricki Herbert was the 4-1 defeat against Nepal which is the first defeat to Nepal in the last 17 years.

Assistant coach Ismail Mahfooz will work as the care taking coach against Yemen in the second leg on 7th June.

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Agon on Jun 05
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Can't wait to see the band wagon jump on the next coaches head asking to be sacked. We just don't realize that our team is the worst in the region... Any maybe one of the worst in the world.... But they act like they are probably in par with Germany and Brazil. The most big headed players with the least talent and physicality
Reality on Jun 05
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There is a difference between losing a match after giving your best and playing to a tactic that suck out the strength of the team. Under Riki this team was stuck with the latter.
Maldives on Jun 05
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And then we miss Popov.
Imma on Jun 05
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I wonder how different things would have been if we had kept Drago Mamic. We were on the cusp of making it into the final of the AFC Challenge Cup under his leadership, with the players looking ready to give it their all. He was clearly a great motivator. Unfortunately, FAM decided to reward him for his good work by letting him go without a note of thanks. FAM could have saved a lot of resources by persevering with Mamic, as well as given him a lot of time to analyze the local leagues and pick the best players for his system, but all this chopping and changing of coaches since has broken up our momentum and we seem to be stuck forever in a transitional loop. Make no mistake, I think Herbert looked a bit lost for a few months now, but I think all of this could've been easily avoided if FAM's technical committee did their jobs properly. I'm sure Tom and his team will take note of this point.
boyko on Jun 07
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Off the field too his mistakes were not less by any means. He alienated a section of media for not reporting what he saw was mandatory, he thought he should be venerated because we were lucky to have a world cup coach for a tiny island nation. He wanted to hog the limelight without the requisite progress reflected on the field. It was square pegs in round hole, perfectly imperfect, a mismatch. He was a wrong choice in the first place, not match for football of this region, even his short-lived stint as a coach North East football club in Indian Football League had been disaster. Some people were asking even then what was FAM thinking?

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