Football Sri Lanka (FSL) president Jaswar Umar claims he will pay Rs 250,000 to each player if the team wins their two encounters against Yemen in the World Cup qualifying round.
The first game will be played on October 12 in Abha, Saudi Arabia and the second game will be played in Colombo on October 17.
Andy Morrison
The Sri Lanka team comprises players who represented the country in the Asia Cup tournament held last year. Almost the same team is picked though they have not had any competitive matches after that, but they have attended training camps in Qatar and played a few practice matches against those teams.
Currently, the team composes a few players of Sri Lankan parents who live in Germany and the United Kingdom. They have applied for Sri Lanka documents that will make them eligible to play for Sri Lanka. Two of them are Waseem Razeek and Senan de Silva who play in Germany and England respectively.
Yemen is ranked 156th in the world that is much higher than the ranking of Sri Lanka. They are considered better than Sri Lanka but in recent times Sri Lanka Football procured a coach from the United Kingdom. He is Andy Morrison who has played for Manchester United in the top division and is expected to elevate the standard of Sri Lankan footballers to match that of Yemen at the appropriate time.
“As the players have not played for some time, it will be a long journey for them to reach high fitness levels and standards. They are at present doing a lot of work to get back to international levels they had reached last year. This is due to them not being able to train of play domestic football,” said Morrison.
“I took over only a month ago and we have to do a lot of work in preparation for the challenges they have to face ahead. We played a few practice matches against Uzbekistan to gauge our progress and found that we have to work harder on fitness and techniques. We are grateful for these practice games that allowed us to spot what challenges we have to follow,” said Morrison.
Sri Lanka squad
Sujan Perera, Prabath Arunasiri, Harsha Fernando, Charitha Ratnayake, Chalana Chameera, Asikur Rahuman, Faizer Aman, Kaveesh Fernando, Sehnal Pingho, Mariyathas Nitharshan, Afeel Mohamed, Jude Supan, Faizal Aakib, Waseem Razeek, Nazeer Shifan, Chathuranga Madushan, Mohammed Shabeer, Chamod Dilshan, Rifkhan Mohamed, Kavindu Ishan, Naizer Mohamed Fasal, Senan de Silva, Aris Mohamed Hasmeer
