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| Fesco's AYL failed to get a point in the first round |
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Of course the lurking danger is always there, that, yours by virtue of being a smaller team – by way of smaller squad, smaller funds, lesser talented – to suffer a disastrous run in the tournament, of brutally being banished to the bottom of table forever in the wake of merciless drubbing by teams better than you. That’s a nightmare that you wake up each morning. Well, if you are the coach, though.
Whether AYL is a case of such disaster waiting to happen since Fesco came to its helm of affairs is the moot point. All it has transpired is AYL is struggling quite badly and team coach is under immense pressure to deliver the goods which has not been forthcoming. Not when you look at the point table. Seven matches, zero points.
Indeed for a first division team to end a round – that is a seven match streak – without so much as a point is something that begs serious questions. Is the team competent enough to be in this tournament? Or is the team of lesser strength that they are not able to maintain the momentum with the other teams? Or is it that coach Fesco not able to inspire his band of players? Or just tad unlucky?
It is difficult to agree with the last question. It is highly unlikely that a team able to qualify to this competition aptly named “Dhivehi league” will not have the wherewithal to compete at this level given the kind of young, energetic players he has at his disposal. Your imagination is doomed to failure to believe you lost all the seven matches due to bad luck. If at all that is what you think.
Alright, it may be acceptable to lose 3 or 4 matches in consecutive games but all the seven games in the first round? No. That is too much to ask for. It is certainly not referees bad decisions alone that you did not have a single point in your kitty. Certainly not your nervous strikers alone responsible for who, though, have spurned too many glorious chances which you could have easily converted for at least one point, if not, all three points.
Fesco’s contention that he needs some good players upfront is certainly believable as is mostly the case with minnows. But that is not surely all the reasons that are riddled with AYL. There has to be something deep-lying than the superficial bad luck to go with lack of good players.
Look AYL is almost the same team which last year along with Imma’s Maziya gave some scare to heavy bigwigs like Victory and VB sports. Barring some injuries to some important players Fesco had a team brimming with energy and fire in the belly. All that he lacked was a ‘master tactician’ in his shadow in the name of Kuda Heena.
Whether it is his absence that consigned him to doom with a listless team or the adjustment problems that he had to contend with, of getting used to coach a team single-handedly after a brief stint with Valencia in early 2000, is all there to see.
He hasn’t done justice to the post he has been offered by AYL management or brought any smiles to the limited number of supporters they has. On the face of it, he is not finding, well not yet, the shoes he has been left with, of the size that he can fit. Sure, last year he was enjoying it in abundance but that was thanks to ample resource he could draw on from the technical and tactical expertise of Heena. It was he who was keeping Fesco’s post-match swagger alive.
So what now. Demote the team to second division? All one can see is, a badly demoralized team lunging from one despair to another, steeped in misery, with no respite in sight. All the forces that conspired this result still very much in attendance, what is apparent is, without some sort of change somewhere in the team it doesn’t look good for its existence in this division.
Whether it is to do with addition of new players or the change of vanguard that is Fesco, some change somewhere has to occur. Players need some inspiration from somewhere – old, stale, overused ideas have to be replaced with new, fresh, technical, tactical acumens. If that, in part, has to do with Fesco resigning from his post – well, a remedy has to be found soon. It is already too late.
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