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Maldives National Futsal team loses final group match 9-3, to China

In the final group B match of Men's Futsal tournament of the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, Maldives played against Peoples Republic of China today. The match was comfortably won 9-3 by China. A positive for the Maldives Futsal team would be that they were able to score more than one goal in a match. But it must be concerning that they conceded 9 goals in the second consecutive match.

futsal-starting-line-upMaldives Futsal team started in a positive manner scoring the first goal in the 3' minute of the match by Furgan Ibrahim (Jersey No. 4). China equalised in the 6' minute, a goal by Zhao Liang (Jersy No. 7). China took the lead 3 minutes later, goal scored by Xu Yang (Jersy No. 6). First half ended 2-1 with China leading.

In the Second half China took full control of the match and scored 7 more goals to take the match away from the Maldives. Maldives did manage to score 2 goals but could not keep up their impressive play of the first half.

futsal-match-reviewIn the post match interview Maldives National Futsal Team coach Abdulla Naseer highlighted the importance of the match experience the players gained from the tournament.

"This tournament has also been my first time as a coach, so it's been a good experience for me too and next time we will try to do better.

"We haven't played for eight years in international tournaments, so it's already good that our federation gave us the chance of showing up here in Ashgabat for these Games to build up good experience."

"Once against these teams like United Arab Emirates or Uzbekistan we used to lose 25, even 30 goals to nothing. We couldn't even score back then. At this tournament we showed that we could score and improve match after match."

Maldives Futsal team lost the first match to Oman 3-1, and the second match to Afghanistan by 6-1 and the third match to Uzbekistan by a score of 9-1.

*Match information and statistics taken from the official website of the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.

21 September 2017