the Maldives to return home yet again without a point or scoring. A Passang Tshering goal was of little consolation as a 2–1 friendly loss to Nepal failed to end the streak, before a similarly poor 2009 SAFF Championship saw them lose 4–1 to Bangladesh, 6–0 to Sri Lanka and 7–0 to Pakistan, a Nawang Dendhup penalty against Bangladesh being their only reward in all three games. 2011 to present day Bhutan withdrew from the international stage for the next two years, re-emerging to play two back to back friendly matches against Nepal in preparation for the 2012 AFC Challenge Cup. Both of these games resulted in narrow losses, 1–0 and 2–1. Their 2012 AFC Challenge Cup qualification was essentially over before it started. Rather than being drawn in a group for initial qualification, the process was changed so that the lowest-ranked eight teams entering the competition played-off over two legs on a home-and-away basis. Bhutan perhaps suffered from the fact that neither leg was played in Bhutan, with both matches taking place at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium, Gurgaon, India, but nonetheless, a hat-trick from Sidiq Walizada in the first leg to give Afghanistan a 3–0 lead, made the second leg, which Afghanistan won 2–0, essentially irrelevant. A disappointing year was compounded with three successive defeats in the 2011 SAFF Championship, Bhutan losing 3–0 to Sri Lanka, 5–0 to India and finally 8–1 to Afghanistan, Chencho Gyeltshen's consolation being the only positive from the year's competition. The team played only one match in 2012, a 5–0 lost friendly to Thailand, prior to the 2013 SAFF Championship. This tournament produced an almost identical result to the previous SAFF championship; Bhutan opened the competition losing 3–0 to Afghanistan, then 8–2 to the Maldives despite being 2–1 up at one point and level going into halftime, before rounding off another miserable year with a 5–2 loss to Sri Lanka. One of the main reasons suggested for Bhutan's significant drop in form was the amount of money available to players, even those who played for the national team. Yeshey Dorji, one of the country's leading players, announced his retirement following the 2013 SAFF Championships, citing an inability to generate a sufficient living from football as the main reason. In 2014, the Bhutan Football Federation withdrew the Nu 4,000 monthly payment to players in the national team, and whilst money is spent at grassroots,