We don’t want to disappoint fans - Drago

May 26, 2014 - 04:09:39 | Shimaaz Ali
Drago Mamic said that they don't want to disappoint the supporters after the semi final. (MS Photo: Shimaaz Ali)

Male’, MALDIVES – Maldives national team coach Drago Mamic has said that they don’t want to disappoint the fans and they want to win the semifinal and even the final of AFC Challenge Cup.

Speaking at the pre match press conference held at Paradise Island Resort, Mamic said that their aim is to win the semifinal match against Philippines.

“I would like to congratulate Philippines team for qualifying the semifinal of AFC Challenge Cup. For sure all these four teams deserved to be in the semifinal and everybody can be a winner.”

“Our aim is to win the tournament and I am sure we are in a good situation to win the tournament and all the players are available for this game. We don’t want to disappoint our beautiful fans.”

Coach also said that the opponent team is a very good team and they will try to diminish their quality during the match.

“For sure it will be a very competitive game and the opponent team is a very good team. So we will try to diminish their quality and try our best to win this game.”

When asked about a possibility of changing his starting line-up against Palestine, Drago said that it’s not clever to change a winning team.

“You know I am very happy that I can have two three more options on the bench that I can use in the semifinal and in the final. It’s not clever to change a winning team for experiments and I am not going to change a winning team.”

Maldives will play against the Philippines in the semifinal of AFC Challenge Cup tomorrow night at 2100 hours.

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footballmad on May 27
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Has anyone used FIFA's ranking widget on their website. If you use that and project our ranking, based on a win in the semi-final it will predict that our points will be aorund 158, gaining aorund the 20th place in Asia. Why's that important? I can remember when Shah Ismail was a general secretary of FAM about 5 years ago, i read an interview where he said him and FAM want the Maldives to be amongst Asia's top 20 teams. So, if we win the semi-fianls, we will have achieved that ambitious goal! So, this time, it's for real, every successful kick/pass/header, tackle in the game against the Phillipines will mean that we'll get that much closer to gaining the highest ranking we've ever reached in our footballing history!
Imma on May 27
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It would also mean we would definitely skip the preliminary play-offs and go directly to the group stages for the new combined Asian Cup/World Cup qualifiers set to begin next year. This is also highly important.
Ahan on May 27
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Yes, exactly!!!! Actually there should be an article about this whole thing. We just have to put little more effort. The 2019 Asian Cup will have 24 teams, and our current rank is asia's 28th, so it is not that difficult. and also keep in mind not easy!!! If we win this game we can go there (the 20th position) but in the comming months if we do not play good friendly matches we are gonna fall in the ranking. ::: Knowing this, and our inability to play good friendlies, i have been saying to invite central asian countries to the SAFF Championship, so that we will be getting good matches to boost our ranking. We have now seen the play of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and they are beatable!!! Just imagine how good it will be if this years SAFF C'ship have these team!!! In this challege cup there is NO OTHER SAFF country except afghan. And if we play those central asian coutries in late this year and get good results then we have a very big advantage agaist the likes of India/afganistan to fight for the top half of the ranking.

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