New Radiant and Valencia feel pressure after goalless draw

The draw put pressure on New Radiant's (Blue) back to back title approach

Male', MALDIVES - Both New Radiant and Valencia are under pressure after a goalless draw in their round two meeting played today. New Radiant’s struggle to win back to back league title and Valencia’s effort to reach top four are now hanged in balance, as New Radiant lies at third place and Valencia lies at fifth after three games are left to play for each team in the league.

New Radiant started today’s game without suspended midfielder Shamveel Gasim and Valencia had to cope without suspended Shinaz Hilmy and Faruhadh Ismail.

Ali Ashfaag threatened his former club in the first minute of the game, but Jameel cleared the danger to an early corner.

In the 29th minute Valencia players sent the ball into the back of New Radiant’s net from Mukhthar’s free kick, but the referee whistled for a foul on keeper Aslam.

In the 35th minute a header from Felix flew over the cross bar and six minutes later Valencia keeper Rameez knocked away a challenge from Ashfaag.

Seven minutes into the second half, a shot from Thoriq missed the target nearly.

Fifteen minutes to full time, New Radiant keeper Aslam blocked a shot from unmarked Azim.

After the match New Radiant coach expressed his main problem in today’s game and that is the defensive wall of Valencia. He also defended the inclusion of Ahmed Thoriq in his team.

“These are strong teams; the only problem we faced today is some walls in front of the goal, which we cannot beat”

“Thoriq practices in his homeland; from his practices here he proved he is worth including in first eleven”

Gerd also states he didn’t understand the decisions by referee.

“Sometime he made good decisions, but sometimes he made it very poorly; not only for us, for his (Binmaa) team as well”

Gerd added that he will think about replacing the suspended players for their next game against Maziya.

Meanwhile, Valencia coach (Binmaa) Abdullah Waheed insisted they knew the game will be hard and he still hopes something from the league and is happy the result they achieve with the players they have.

“We came to win three points, we know it would be hard”

“We played better than New Radiant in the second half, but first half we performed quite badly”

“We missed the absence of Faruhaadh and Shinaz”

When asked about winning the league he replied: “Results are not coming the way we want, but we will try till the last game. If we win the next three games, we could be in a good position”

“With the inexperienced players and lack of good substitutes, we are not so bad”

“Even today we played against a team containing national team nine players and I am happy with the performance of my team”

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