National team squad includes players never played a league game

Football Association of Maldives (FAM) today announced a shocking national team squad for the upcoming Asian Games Qualifier against Palestine.

True, we are sort of keepers after the retirement of Imran Mohamed and Mohamed Imran but simply ignoring, yes ignoring young keepers who played every game in the league to keepers never played a game or never made it to his club bench will make many speechless.

Mohamed Faisal is one of the finest keepers we have right now but he hardly played a game for New Radiant after national team game against Oman and Abdullah Ziyazan never made it to club bench. Still it is alright to select them for the squad based on their past performances but ignoring keepers who played every game in the league such as Maalhos and Kudahuvadhoo keeper are unacceptable.

Ibrahim Zameer of Maalhos and Abdullah Yazeed of Kudahuvadhoo played in the last five league games while Green Streets Fairooz played three of their last five league games. Yet, none of them was selected.

FAM president Bassam promised incentives for island based teams and the biggest incentive would be to utilize their talent. But how the national team is being selected the promise itself is a joke.

Teams from islands suffer trips of more than 6hrs on the sea to play in the league and managed to grab shocking results against high profiled clubs yet their efforts are being simply ignored by the governing body.

Is there a single reason for island based teams to spend millions to play in our top league? No.