Mohan urges patience as team builds on early success

National Football Team Coach Mohamed Shiyaz (Mohan) has said that to achieve further improvement, the team must practise patience. 

Maldives won the South Asian Super Cup organized by Sri Lanka's football federation through defeating Sri Lanka with an aggregate score. 

In his first match at the helm of the national team, Mohan—who stepped into the role just weeks ago—celebrated a win but admitted the struggle behind it defied description.

The reason for this is that it has been over a year since a domestic league was played in the Maldives, he said. 

Mohan admitted, “The team hadn’t played in a year and a half, so their fitness was in rough shape coming into today’s match.”

Maldives won the first match against Sri Lanka with a score of 3-nil. The match was dominated by the Maldives. Mohan said that in the first match, the team had applied all their energy to achieve a good result. 

"But we failed to recover by the second day," he said in an interview with MaldiveSoccer. 

He said that the difficulties in recovery between the two closely timed matches had been due to the lack of domestic leagues. 

FAM's calendar has scheduled the league to commence this month. Mohan said that once this comes to pass, the national team's fitness will improve in the coming days. 

The experienced coach cautioned that time and patience is necessary to bring back the national team to optimum status.

"This is a gradual process," he said. "It will take time, and in the coming days, match results may fluctuate."

"However, if we all stay determined and strive for the same goals, we will see Maldives football improving."

Mohan said that the team's efforts in the matches against Sri Lanka were seen by all. He said that it was due to lack of fitness that the team had displayed exemplary performance in the first match, but made some mistakes in the second. 

Mohan said that it was an honour to start his term as National Team coach with an aggregate win, earning the cup. 

"This is only the beginning. I don't even know how to describe the pressures faced at first," Mohan said. 

The next match that the National Team will play under Mohan's coaching is the Asian Cup Qualifying against Tajikistan on their home turf.