The sky-blue popular Dhanmondi outfit Abahani Ltd, which reached inter-zonal semifinal of AFC Cup last year, made their early exist from this year’s meet due to lack of away goal against Maziya SRC of the Maldives.
After playing a goalless draw with Maziya SRC in Male on Wednesday, Portuguese coach of Dhaka Abahani Mario Lemos expressed his total dissatisfaction over the match.
He told the reporters from Male on Thursday, “It’s really shocking that we didn’t lose in any (AFC Cup) match, goal differences also same, but we eliminated from the meet (AFC Cup) just for away goal.”
- coach is also very unhappy with opponent’s coach attitude and said, “In a match, one team will win one will lose, but,the attitude will be sporting, I am very sorry to say that the attitude of Maziya coach was very aggressive, he wanted to win the match by hook or crook, in my playing and coaching career, I never have seen such a coach who quarrels with opponent players”.
Abahani will fly to Dhaka from Male on Friday. They will play their first Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) match on Sunday against Bangladesh Police FC.
About their expectation in the ongoing BPL, Mario said, “We have no way to think except league trophy, we finished runners-up in the last year league and that’s why we had to play in the AFC Cup qualification. In this season, we were eliminated from quarterfinal of the Federation Cup, now our full concentration is on the league”.
In the last BPL, Abahani lost twice against Bashundhara Kings and the result made a bad impact on their league performance. In this season, Abahani doesn’t want to lose point against Bashundhara, “If we want to be the champions, then we have to secure points from Bashundhara, “Mario further said.
“Bashundhara will play in the AFC Cup as well as in the BPL,their key players will create little pressure on us that we had faced in last season also. It’s true that they (Kings) have a quality reserve bench so that they can use their reserve players in time.
According to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) rule, Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) champions team will directly play in the group stage of AFC Cup and Federation Cup champions team play in the qualifying round.
In the ongoing season, BashundharaKings is the Federation Cup champions. If BashundharaKings win the league title too then they will play directly in the group stage of the next AFC Cup and the league runners up will get chance to play in qualifying round of the AFC Cup.