Maziya quietly confident

Following one-and-a-half-hour’s drive from Paltan to Dhanmondi, Maziya S&RC coach Marjan Sekulovski was in a furious mood, but his charges seemed cheerful as they went through their first training session at the Abahani ground yesterday, ahead of tomorrow’s AFC Cup’s prequalification (stage-1) tie against six-time Bangladesh Premier League champions Abahani.

The Maziya players only had a stretching session and a bit of a fun among themselves, probably in a bid to keep themselves relaxed following a 14-hour journey from Male. They came to Dhaka having completed their Premier League campaign on January 28 with a 10-match unbeaten run, including a goalless draw against TC Sports in their last fixture following nine consecutive wins.

The Maldivian outfit, who played in the group stage of the AFC Cup five consecutive times from 2013 to 2017, are upbeat about repeating their feat from the 2017 campaign when they beat Abahani 2-0 in both home and away fixtures.

When asked about their 2017 results, confidence and determination was apparent on the face of the 46-year-old coach.

“It is good to be optimistic [against Abahani] but every year has different condition and different players. However, we are hoping to repeat the kind of results we produced against them in 2017.”

In 2017 and 2018, none of the Bangladeshi clubs managed to beat their Maldivian counterparts at the pre-qualification stage or the group stage, and Abahani are seemingly under pressure ahead of this match even though Marjan believes past record will not have an impact on the game. 

“Every game is different, so I don’t think we have advantage on the basis of previous record. The important thing is that our players will give their best performance and win the game,” said Marjan.

“We watched Abahani’s matches of the Federation Cup; they are a good side and it is not important which department of theirs is strong. The most important thing is the result and the pitch we are going to play on,” the Maziya coach said. “The target is to get a good result [in the away match] and then in the home match and advance to the second round of prequalification stage.”

Maziya have eight current national players along with four foreign players – two from Afghanistan, one each from Serbia and one from Granada.