The Maldivian Women’s National Team, who are set to play in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup qualifiers next year, are to camp in United Arab Emirates (UAE) to train for the games.

This is the third time the team is taking part in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup qualifiers. The first time was in the year 2006, the second in 2010.

The team is training for next year’s qualifiers. It recently played a friendly match against B. Eydhafushi team as part of this training, winning the match with a 3-0 score.

While the President of the Football Association of Maldives (FAM) Bassam Adeel Jaleel had stated that the women’s team will be heading abroad for a training camp after the Eydhafushi match, he on Wednesday via Twitter announced that the team will be training in the United Arab Emirates next month.

The FAM president added that the team will be playing two friendlies against the UAE women’s team, as part of the training.

Maldives will play in the qualifying matches in India in 2022, and is in Group B along with Tajikistan, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

While 12 teams will compete in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup, four have already qualified; Australia, China, Japan and host country India. The other eight teams will be determined by qualification.

Bassam had previously revealed work to appoint a foreign coach to the team, with FAM’s Technical Director Ahmed Shareef designated as a temporary instructor until then.

He said that appointing a foreign coach would be able to sharpen and develop the team’s skills to a satisfactory standard, and reveals that a lot of the team’s achievements are owed to the hard work of a Japanese coach.

Looking at some of the Maldivian Women’s National Team’s previous feats, in 2018, the team played in the International Women’s Quadrangular competition coming in third place. Furthermore, the team achieved the low medal in South Asian Games’ Women’s Football event in 2019. Also, in 2016’s SAFF championship, held in Bangladesh, the team won matches against Bhutan and Sri Lanka, going to the semi-finals.

-- Article by Rajje.mv