With a barrage of goals, Salman Farsi School’s under-16 squad reminded their competition in the National School League Football (NSL Football) of their dangerous potential.
Following a loss last week at the hands of Lycee Francais International Georges Pompidou, Salman Farsi School were a motivated bunch and took their pent-up drive out on GEMS Our Own Indian School with a lopsided 11-0 victory on Saturday at The Sevens.
Six players found the back of the net, led by star Amirhossein Rahpeima with four goals and an assist for his best Cristiano Ronaldo impression with the No7 on his back.
The performance earned the budding star Man of the Match honours and encouraged coach Mohammad Rahmatollah.
“Well, he’s wearing No7 and wanted to act as Cristiano Ronaldo today,” Rahmatollah said.
“The best thing is he was not as available last week when he was totally lost, but today he was firing on all cylinders. We, as the coach and his team-mates, were very happy with how he played.”
To get his players back on track this week, Rahmatollah took an unconventional approach that paid off.
“We actually prepared as a total failure and not a win,” he said.
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“We told our players ‘if you lose today, don’t think this is just a park we come to every week. You lose today, that’s it and you don’t come back anymore. You win today, we continue until the end of the tournament.’ We just gave them a different motivation to pass and practice.”
It was another dominant effort for Salman Farsi School in under-14 as well, with Zahedi Pour Niaei notching a hat trick and an assist to add to his six-goal performance from last weekend in a 9-0 win over JSS Private School.
The Al Ahli product’s total was supplemented with braces from team-mates Amirabbas Mohammadi, Hamed Zareai and Meysam Ghafouri, who also tallied four
assists.
The most impressive team and individual performance of the day, however, came from GEMS New Millennium School Al Khail’s U14 squad in their 15-0 destruction of Credence High School.
Mohad Ayub Mohmand stood out on a roster of exemplary outings with five goals and two assists, while Saral Kapadia provided four of his own and Ankit Karangutkar and Dhruv Nair each added hat-tricks.
Despite the overwhelming success, coach Ajish Joseph believes there’s still plenty of room for improvement – a scary thought for their competition.
“It’s good to see the players are improving every day,” Joseph said. “We need more practice. Our players need more fitness actually. In the second half, they’re getting tired. We have to focus more on fitness and hopefully they’ll be even better next time.”
Delhi Private School’s U16 team, meanwhile, had to overcome an ugly fracas with Al Sadiq Islamic English School which saw a red card to win 3-0.
In keeping focused on the task, Waleed Mohammed scored a brace and assisted on another to spur his team to victory.
“It feels good and the boys played well, but it was very rough and we had to fight. It was an unwanted fight but we’re happy we’re now near the top of the table,” Mohammed said.
Basil Faidhi displayed an abundance of confidence in Wellington International School’s 3-0 victory over Delhi Private School Dubai in U14.
“We have a lot of chemistry in our team and that allows us to play well,” said Faidhi, who found the back of the net for Man-of-the-Match honours.
“It was quite easy actually. They were in second place and we thought they would be a challenge, but they didn’t give us what we expected. We expect a more challenging team next time.”
