Abahani, Eagles AFC Qualifier to be played in Nepal

 The match scheduled between Maldives’ Club Eagles and Bangladesh’s Dhaka Abahani in the second round of qualifiers in the AFC Cup Qualifying preliminaries has been proposed to take place in Nepal.

The match was previously supposed to be played in Bangladesh, but the decision was revised as the country went into lockdown following a spike in Covid-19 cases. As such, the AFC had determined that the match will be played at a neutral field, and had given Dhaka Abahani until last Saturday to determine the best stadium for them to play the game in.

While Dhaka Abahani had previously attempted to have the match be played in India, it has since been finalized that the match will be played in Katmandu, the capital city of Nepal. On Tuesday, the AFC formalized this in a letter sent to both teams set to play in the match, which was previously scheduled to be held on Wednesday. However, as the match could no longer be held in Bangladesh, the AFC has since delayed the qualifiers confrontation to 21 April 2021.

Due to the worsening of Covid-19 transmissions, all of Bangladesh was placed under an effective lockdown on Wednesday, with no international air travel permitted to or from the country for a period of one week. As a result, the Dhaka Abahani team no longer have a means of attending the re-scheduled qualifiers match in Nepal, and their manager has reportedly also communicated these difficulties to the AFC.

While Club Eagles is preparing for the second round of qualifiers in the AFC Cup, they have won their earlier preliminary confrontation with Bhutanese champion Thimphu City with a 2-0 score. If Eagles manage a win over Abahani, they will be moving on to the play-off stage in the AFC Cup, and will most likely face-off against India’s Bengaluru FC.