Bangladesh national football team is to fly for Maldives from Dhaka today at 11:30 am to play a FIFA friendly match in Male to be held on March 24.
Ahead of the match, team coach, manager and the captain expressed their high hopes to do well against the hosts when they talked in a press conference on Monday at a local hotel in the city.
Bangladesh and Maldives in their head to head meeting since 1984 played 14 matches in different competitions and different venues including home and away and neutral venues also.
In their previous 14 encounters, Bangladesh won six matches and Maldives won five while three matches were drawn.
Bangladesh had a record 8-0 victory over Maldives in a match in the South Asian Federation Games (SAFF) in 1985 when Maldives also have a 5-0 big win against Bangladesh in an International Friendly match in 2016.
In fact in recent times, Maldives have been dominating over Bangladesh when since September 16, 2011 to October 2021, the Maldives teams won four matches at a stretch.
This time Bangladesh are going to Maldives with some inspiration of winning their last match in the Mahinda Rajapaksa tournament in Sri Lanka in November 2021.
Javier Fernandez Cabrera Marin, head coach of team and Jamal Bhuiyan the captain of the team, both were positive when they were put across their opinion in a press meet on Monday.
Cabrera, the Spanish coach, when speaking to the media said, “We worked together for almost three days, all are positive. I have been with the federation (BFF) for last two months and planned how we can progress, I am happy, we are on right track. I had meetings with the players and the technical staff singly and will try to implement the planning.”
Revealing Maldives team as a strong side, Cabrera said, “Maldives are very strong team, this generation have been playing together for a long. They are in a very good position and we are also ready to fight against them.”
Replying to a query the Spanish coach said, “We worked on video session over Maldives team, we worked ourselves most of the times, how we can build up our game. Rest of two days before the match we will work more on them and how can we execute our plans.”
“Yes, very natural, there would have some pressure, as it’s the first assignment, I feel huge responsibility. If I have no tension, I am not a professional, but right now my focus is on the match. Winning match is my main target and this is our tactics, because this is important,” Cabrera replied to another query.
Captain Jamal Bhuiyan said that they were happy having the opportunity to play the matches, “At the moment we are happy having opportunity to play, we want to do well in two matches. We have been working with the coach and planning how can we win matches.”
