Maldives National Futsal Team is crowned champions of the inaugural SAFF Men’s Futsal Championship being held at Bangkok, Thailand.

Maldives guaranteed the title, with one game left to play, after this evening’s victory against Bhutan.

The game which kicked off at 17:00 (Thailand time), saw Maldives field the usual line up of Abdhullah Shafiu, Ahmed Hameed, Ishan Ibrahim and Mohamed Imran, infront of goalkeeper with Zaidhan Ahmed.

For the first time in their campaign, Maldives were trailing at the twelfth minute of first half, as a counterattack backfired and Bhutan taking the lead.

The equalizer came just over a minute left before halftime, as Hussain ‘Only’ Shareef set up Abdhullah Junaid to strike from outside the box.

Three minutes into the second half, Maldives took the lead, with Ahmed Hameed firing into the roof of the net from a free kick.

With four minutes on the clock, Maldives captain Mohamed Imran struck a screamer from the centre, connecting with the rebound ball from a shot by Junaid.

The SAFF Futsal Championship, organized by the South Asian Football Federation, featured seven nations of South Asia and was played in a single round-robin format.

Having earned all fifteen points in five games played so far, Maldives go into the final fixture with four points ahead of the second-placed Nepal.

Maldives won the SAFF trophy with an impressive streak of five wins in five games – defeating Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and now Bhutan, in succession. The remaining fixture will see Maldives take on Sri Lanka on Monday.