In a bid to regain some of their prides, Bangladesh national football team will face Maldives in a FIFA international friendly (tire 1) today when the team’s coach and captain are very positive with the match.
In the recent times, Bangladesh national side have bitter experiences against Maldives, when they could manage only one win out of five encounters since 2011, they won the last encounter in Sri Lanka in a four-nation tournament in 2021.
But Bangladesh could not break their winning draught against Maldives at their home for a long, so the mission under the newly appointed Spanish coach Javier Fernandez Cabrera Marin will be to break the winning draught at their home.
The Spanish coach had only three practice sessions to watch the players, he selected after watching matches of TVS Bangladesh Premier League football for the last two and a half months.
Cabrera in his 23-man squad included a couple of new faces – Maraz Hosssain and Mohammed Isa Faisal when experienced Saad Uddin and Matin Meah were overlooked.
However, Bangladesh team went Maldives with the motivation of victory against the hosts when they won their last encounter in Sri Lanka.
Bangladesh, who have been playing against Maldives since 1984, yet to taste any victory at their (Maldives) home when their all six wins in home or neutral venues.
So it will be also challenging for the Cabrera, as well for his disciples to make a record of winning a match against Maldives at their home ground.
However, according to information from Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF), coach Cabrera and the captain Jamal Bhuiyan were very much positive about today’s match when they expressed their opinion in a press conference on Wednesday in Male.
Cabrera, mentioning their short period training session, said, “We had only four days for the preparation but will have to adjust.”
But the coach is happy with the players’ approach – “I am extremely happy to see, the way players are fighting, this is the commitment. I am really convinced through forward to defenders, I believe they will play well.”
Jamal almost echoed with the coach when he said, “We worked four to five days together but there would be no problem, as we know each other for a long.”
“We are eagerly looking forward to play the international match, we are really excited to play match almost after six months.”
Replying to a query, Jamal said, “Every coach has his own style, but their impact remained, all the coaches are great, they have good ideas and we will have to implements those and hope we will be able to follow.
