Ali Thameem
National team winger Hamza Mohamed has undergone surgery on the meniscus and Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) of his right knee in Sri Lanka this week.
“For nearly a year, I had been playing through discomfort”, revealed the former Maziya SR winger. He says the initial diagnosis in the Maldives suggested it was a cyst, so he decided to postpone surgery until the end of the season.
“However, after arriving in Sri Lanka, I underwent an MRI, which confirmed injuries to my meniscus and ACL”.
Ninety-seventh-minute goal by Hamza ends unbeaten run of Odi Sports
Although ACL injuries are relatively common among athletes in the Maldives, it usually takes several months to fully recover and get back on the field. Hamza, who had played a crucial role on the national team over the past decade, is expected to miss out on the SAFF Championship 2026, which is scheduled to kick off in the second week of November in Bangladesh.
“I’m gutted to miss the SAFF Championship, but I wish the national team nothing but the very best. I’ll be supporting the boys every step of the way”. The former Maziya winger will also likely miss the most of the first half of the Dhivehi Premier League 2026/2027 season.
Hamza says he looks forward to going through the second phase of recovery, and get back on the pitch.
For those who followed Maziya’s title defense of the DPL this past season, it would have been unlikely to notice that Hamza was suffering from an injury to the knee – he scored ten goals across the eighteen weeks of DPL, just two goals behind the joint top scorers.
