Da Grande aims to reach their target this football season: coach

Da Grande Sports Club aims to reach their target during this football season, says the club’s coach, Ismail Mahfooz.

The club joined the first division of the previous season for the first time with an aim to rank in the top four clubs in the Dhivehi Premier League (DPL) under the coach’s instructions.

Although Da Grande showed exemplary performance during the beginning of the season, a lot of challenges including financially, affected the team. Despite the challenges, Da Grande completed the last season’s DPL coming at the fifth spot.

Further, the FA Cup was also cancelled at a time Da Grande was in the lead having beat Foakaidhoo FC. The cup was cancelled by the Football Association of Maldives (FAM), due to the negative impacts of t the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking during a press conference on Wednesday, Mahfooz revealed that although the club failed to reach their target during the previous season, the club aims to reach its target during this season.

Highlighting that it will be difficult to achieve this target given that the club is a relatively new team, Mahfooz expressed confidence that the team will push through and succeed.

While the team is competing in the new season, there have not been any observable changes to their squad. One of the changes include the team’s goal keeper Mohamed Faisal having signed on to Club Valencia, while Valencia’s goalie Mohamed Jazlan signed onto Da Grande.

Da Grande also selected three foreign players to its squad for the new season, who are currently in quarantine. The three players are expected to join practices soon, said Mahfooz, who stressed that there are concerns that the new players were unable to join in time for the pre-season.

Dhivehi Premier League is to kick off on Sunday and Da Grande is scheduled to go head-to-head with TC Sports Club in its first match of the league, set for Monday.