Time to Chart a New Course for Sustained Success

Many pundits will tell you that 2018 has been a good year for Maldivian football. Most ardent fans will agree. The SAFF Championship trophy, and with it football as we are accustomed to, has emblematically "come home" after all! Fuelled by a contemporary friendly rivalry with our geographic neighbours (that extends well beyond football), we are happy (and proud) in the knowledge that, once again, we have "got one" over our on-pitch rivals, particularly our massive neighbour across the pond - India. Bragging rights that go with victory over India in football is a boost of morale and give much-needed attention to the sport at home. 

The win had its intriguing subplots too. There is a strong case behind the claim that we did not even field our strongest XI. No Ashfaq or Imran. No Adey or Umair either. In all the needless chatter that became the prelude to the tournament, Coach Segert and to a lesser extent his employers themselves, became headline grabbers. Preparations too were not ideal, with the only scheduled full friendly being called off at the last minute. The group stage games further dampened expectations. The passage through to the semifinals was a toss of the coin that fell our way, sending the spirited Sri Lankans packing and our talented yet raw charges through to the next round. From there, we played markedly better and the results were telling. If all of this was planned, it deserves a Hollywood biopic. Nevertheless, the team, including the coaching staff and management, deserve much applause. 

However, while not belittling this most recent achievement of our team, I do honestly believe that there is a need for pensiveness and pragmatism. After all, does this win, at the back of a decade of expectation and near misses, indicate the inception of something bigger, or is it a one-off achievement that will, yet again, fail to be repeated (or bettered) for yet another decade! What should we read into our win against India, the biggest, best resourced and most trophy-laden regional rival? Are we the best footballing nation in the region? Have we elevated our game to sustained excellence on a higher plane? 

My answer to these proverbial "million dollar" questions is dissentious! Maybe we shouldn't read into this with too much gusto. 

FIFA rankings still place India at 97 and the Maldives at 151. The India that we beat was their under-23 side. In fact, India has not sent their full strength senior side to the tournament for a number of years. The SAFF Championship is today a lesser priority for the AIFF. The tournament is viewed as a developmental platform for young talent rather than a marker on their strategic plan for longer term achievement in global football. A simple look at India's calendar of events annually suffices to add credence to this observation. Their focus is on the Asia Cup of 2019. After winming their qualification group, India will feature among the 24 teams that have qualified.

Maldives, on the other hand, ended the Asia Cup Qualification paced third in our group (winning only against lowly Bhutan), and subsequently being eliminated. Without the AFC Challenge Cup (disbanded by the Confederation after its fifth and final edition held in Maldives in 2014), we can look forward to little more than defending our SAFF Championship crown, for the medium term! For the record, I still look back at our semi-final exit at the 2014 Challenge Cup at home to the Philippines. Had we won that tie and advanced to the finals, I honestly believed that we could have overcome Palestine to win the tournament (and more importantly gain automatic qualification to the 2015 AFC Cup! As it was, we lost after extra time to the Filipinos and failed to capitalise on a golden opportunity to get our of our region to compete at a higher plane in regional and global football. FIFA and AFC reshuffled their cards immediately thereafter to make it a lot harder for countries like the Maldives to make it out of regional competitions into the more lucrative market of continental football. 

What is needed now is not to "cry over spilt milk" but to reaffirm our future course. Finger pointing too will not help our cause. So what is needed? Ambition, for one, plays an important role here! Do we really want to rub shoulders with the big boys in Asia? If so, we need to invest in the game, and ensure that the investment is targeted to the right places. Our media habitually pick on improvements in our FIFA rankings, especially if we have leapfrogged a neighbour, but rarely explore the 'science' behind the ranking formula. Let me also assure you that rankings do matter! FIFA's funding and programming access is largely based on ranking, especially for smaller members with limited resources. The most certain way to boost our ranking (hopefully into the top 100) is to play a lot of friendlies, all of them on FIFA sanctioned calendar dates. The authorities must affirm and plan for no less than 10 annual friendlies on sanctioned dates, to accumulate points towards a charge up the ranking table. The chosen opposition too is important. The focus must be on teams ranked between 100 and 150, thus ensuring a strategic maximisation of gains. Similarly, we should chose opponents from South East and East Asia, and possibly the Middle East too, rather than the SAARC fraternity or Southern Indian Ocean minnows. Most of the ties can ideally be abroad, giving the team the necessary exposure and confidence to play in alien and hostile conditions.

Another opportune step maybe to reintroduce the POMIS Cup of old, albeit with a revised format to suit the changing times. This is very much a leaf from India's book, with their Nehru Cup and HERO Intercontinental Cup. Again, we must invite tougher opposition. Lets push the envelope!

A third possible step in a holistic strategy to advance our national team would involve mentorship. There is no harm in shielding ourselves under a wider metaphoric umbrella! Many of the most established and successful footballing nations can be invited and enticed into a partnership with the Maldives, where we gain from their sustained excellence in technical expertise and support. Given our tourism success story, such a highly publicised arrangement can be secured with most of the European giants! After all, everyone loves tiny Maldives and would queue up at the possibility of visiting their dream destination.

My next suggestion is likely to throw up some demurral. It is admittedly controversial. Purely from a footballing perspective, and focusing solely on raising the standard of our national team, we could explore the possibility a tweaking our current stringent citizenship legislation to widen our talent pool beyond the current 400,000 population of Maldives. I include this suggestion with the primary intent of making the readership aware of the extent to which some nations go to attain sporting excellence. While this concept is widely practiced in some other sports such as cricket and athletics, there are examples of this in football as well. History gives this luxury (or presents this necessity) to countries such as Afghanistan and Philippines (with huge diasporas across Europe and America). I do not categorise these countries in this discussion, but rather those that allow for 'naturalisation' as citizens. A case study of only one country suffices to augment my point. The next host of the World Cup, Qatar! Ró-Ró (Portugal), Sebastian Soria (Uruguay), Rodrigo Rabata (Brazil), Assim Madibo (Mali), Luiz Martin Carlos Junior (Brazil), Amine Lecomte (France) are but a few names of 'naturalised' players that have the red and white kit of Qatar at the international level in recent years. For the record, Qatar's native population is just over 300,000, with the rest of the 2.6 million total population being expatriates. I do admit that going down this path would involve careful thought and wider debate that would transcend sporting lines, yet its included here to emphasise the sheer extent to which some nations go to realise their sporting aspirations.

I am sure there will be many ideas that can augment this endeavour, but for the sake of keeping this article from being painfully lengthy, I will stop with just more possible area of focus. We need sports marketing agents to add the Maldives to tbeir portfolio, to ensure that our talent is in fact exported. Many years back, Dhagandey and Oppo set the ball rolling. Few, if any, have followed! The only other export that comes to mind was Bakaa, who has since returned home. Today, we have some of our future talent also placed in top academies of Europe. Why not also export our talent to overseas leagues, and thereby joining what is a growing global market. The possible leagues are many, but to place our talent on the radars of established clubs, we will need knowledge and expertise that can currently not be found in the Maldives. The authorities can therefore invite some established global sports management agencies for regular scouting visits to the Maldives. Players too must be encouraged to seek new pastures. The next time a Benfica come calling, our talented youth must be given the necessary support and encouragement to seize the opportunity!

As I said in a previous article, if Iceland can do it, so can we! Sports is littered with examples of giant killings and upsets. Iceland is just one such example. Leicester City's premiership triumph of 2016 is another. And let us not forget our very own awe-inspiring moment when the South Koreans failed to score against us in 2004. None of these fairy tales came about without planning brilliance. There is often method to madness, as they say. Claudio Ranieri experimented, found a system and stuck to it with stubborn intent. The Icelandic federation too did their homework, in designing a structure that would offset their disadvantage in sample size. Similarly, Manu Gomes (the then coach who parked the bus to secure the draw against South Korea) implemented a plan with clinical efficiency. 

So, when Peter Segart recently mentioned the World Cup, maybe our journalists (instead of dishing sarcasm) should have politely inquired whether he had devised a long-term strategy to take us forward or was simply relying on coin tosses going our way numerous times!




Note: The above article is penned without extensive knowledge of the current strategic plans or longer term policies of FAM, admittedly. It is simply the contribution of a sporting enthusiast and ardent fan and well-wisher of Maldivian football. As I couldn't find such published documentation, no references have been made on this matter. I am confident that there will be such a plan available for easier viewing and ready reference by the footballing fraternity. As such, if any of these suggestions are repetetive or counter productive, I offer my sincere apology. The hope is that some of this can be food for thought and/or points for serious discourse by policymakers.