The Maldives National University Student Union (MNUSU) has participated, in the now a national campaign, to vote, arguably the best football player the country has ever seen, Ali Ashfaq on AFC Cup Bracket Challenge.

While Ashfaq has already qualified to the final of this challenge, the Maldivian fanbase played a huge role as they got fully behind their football hero. A huge campaign on social media started from the quarter-finals of the competition from the moment Ashfaq was trailing. This campaign has led to the formation of a Viber Community group to further hype up the campaign in the Semi finals of the challenge.

The semi-final round between Ashfaq and Nguyen Quang Hai. Ashfaq got 54.68% votes while Quand got 45.32% which passed Ashfaq to the finals. On November 23^rd 2020 members of the MNUSU executive committee, advisory board members and some members of MNUSU media team met up with the “team Ashfaq” viber community members.

 During the meeting, they discussed about the things that MNUSU could do to support them in the campaign hence, the canvas and the posters would be provided by MNUSU. The active members of MNUSU media team is currently making the posters and their efforts on making the campaign video is progressing. The posters would be distributed in areas where there is a lot of people around the time of the final match voting.

The voting of the final of AFC bracket challenge will be on November 25^th 2020, Wednesday and all the details regarding the activities conducted by the Ashfaq campaign would be provided in the “Team Ashfaq” viber community group.

 The link to join the viber group:

https://invite.viber.com/

The goal of Ashfaq that featured in the challenge was the electrifying goal he scored for New Radiant against Indonesia’s Persibo Bojonegoro in a match which New Radiant won 7-0 in 2013.  This same goal won the best solo goal in another challenge by AFC Cup back in June 2020.

Ashfaq will now be competing with Chan Siu Ki of Hong Kong’s South China AA in the final.

Ashfaq is among the top 10 scorers who played in the AFC cup, and is ranked 6^th for the 29 goals that he scored for Valencia Club, New Radiant and VB Addu FC. The Spanish player Bienvenido Marañón who played for the Philippine FC Ceres-Negros is ranked 1^st on the list with 35 goals indicating that Ashfaq needs 6 more goals to top the list.

Written by:
Sarah Mohamed Shareef &
Hawwa Laila Luthfee,
MNUSU Media