Features

Can’t blame island teams for delay tactics

FAM president Bassam was right to remind the world the delay tactics applied by Belgium in their win against Brazil. His tweet could be a dig at those who were criticizing the delay tactics by teams in Dhiraagu Dhivehi League.

But what FAM President wasn’t aware or simply not understanding was that Belgium were 2-0 up against one of the heavy favourites of World Cup and their keeper wasn’t just juggling the ball inside his penalty area for nearly one minute to delay the game. Belgium applied one of the very successful footballing tactics called counter attacks.

In the Male’ League game played between TC Sports and Fehendhoo, the latter’s keeper juggled the ball inside his own penalty area for close to a minute and the art of deliberate delaying continued even when their team was losing the game.

Some may blame Fehendhoo for that but people to really blame this is those who pitted four amateur teams into Maldives top league. The biggest prize for the champions of Dhivehi League is to represent Maldives in the AFC Cup but these four teams from islands are not even eligible to play in the AFC Cup.

These teams travel from their islands for these games and have resources far less than what’s available for Male’ based teams and to prevent humiliation from these top teams they have every right to apply delay tactics within the law of the games.

1 thought on “Can’t blame island teams for delay tactics

  1. This is what we do when we play against Iran. I say, he must have learned this from the most talented team on this planet (Maldives nation team). Replace Imran with this keeper. We need some one good at wasting time. His time, my time, opponents time.

Comments are closed.

Related Post