Bangladesh football coach Jamie Day reacts during a training session at Kamalapur on Wednesday. — BFF photo
Victory will be the sole focus of Bangladesh when they take on Bhutan in their second and final FIFA international friendly match today with an eye on improving their FIFA ranking.
The match, which comes hot on heels of thumping 4-1 against the same opponents last week, will start at 7:00pm at the Bangabandhu National Stadium.
Bangladesh Football Federation organised the matches as part of their preparations for successive 2022 FIFA World Cup and 2023 Asian Cup joint qualifiers matches against Qatar and India.
Bangladesh are scheduled to take on Asian champion Qatar in Dhaka on October 10 and India five days later in Kolkata.
Coach Jamie Day was hoping to use the Bhutan games to restore Bangladesh’s confidence before the crucial qualifiers as well as help their rankings improve.
In the current FIFA rankings, Bangladesh [187th] are still trailing Bhutan (185th) by two places.
The men in green, however, showed that they are ahead in skill toying with Bhutan in rain-soaked pitch on September 29.
‘We will go with the same plan. It might be the similar pitch like other night but whatever the pitch situation is, we play accordingly. We want to win tomorrow [today], ‘Day said in the pre-match press briefing at the Kamalapur Stadium.
‘If we win again, we will get a few more points. We want to climb up in the FIFA rankings. As I said already I want to climb up to the 170. So, we have to look at games where we have chance of winning. Win the game and take the motivation into the game against Qatar,’ he added.
Bangladesh captain Jamal Bhuiyan was happy with the team’s preparation and hinted at taking the similar strategy.
’Preparation is good. Coach will not bring too many changes and he is likely to field a squad that will play against Qatar. There might be one or two changes,’ he said.
Bhutan coach Pema believed that if the rain keeps out they might win the tie.
‘Our target is to win, at least win one match. Let’s see, hopefully, we will win the game. If it does not rain… the game might be different. Bangladesh might be doing better, even we are also not bad,’ said Pema.
Bangladesh are placed in Group E alongside Afghanistan, Qatar, India and Oman to play the joint qualifiers and started their campaign with a 0-1 loss against Afghanistan in Dushanbe on September 10.
Source: New Age.
