Bangladesh national football team players stretch during a training session at the Al-Mesaimeer Club training ground in Qatar on Tuesday. — BFF photo
Englishman Jamie Day will be baptised as the Bangladesh national football team coach when his charges will take on Qatar’s Al-Mesaimeer Sports Club in their lone practice match in Qatar today.
Bangladesh football team, which had been undergoing a two-week long training camp in Qatar as part of their preparation for next month’s Asian Games and September’s SAFF Championship, were supposed to take part in two practice matches.
But due to excessive heat of the Middle-Eastern nation, they will now play only one practice match, which is scheduled to start at 10:00pm Bangladesh Standard Time.
This will be Day’s first match in the dugout of Bangladesh national team since he took over the charge last month.
Bangladesh played their last international friendly match against Laos in March 27 under the tutelage of their former Anglo-Australian coach Andrew Ord.
After the departure of Ord, Day was trying hard to pick up a right combination of players for the forthcoming events.
The 38-year old coach believed that today’s match against Al-Mesaimeer would be the right platform to judge the ability of the players.
‘We are expecting them [the players] to have hopefully taken on board what we have been working on in training regarding their shape with and without the ball,’ said Day on Tuesday.
‘Everyone will play roughly the same amount of game time during the match.’
With most of the top Qatari clubs now currently outside the country for the pre-season preparation, the Bangladesh team management could only manage a practice match against Qatar’s Second Division side.
‘They [Al Mesaimeer] look a very good side that have some strong players, so [it] will be good for me and my staff to see how the boys cope against that in what I think will be a physical match,’ Day said.
‘I am not worried about the result as we are just looking to see if they [Bangladesh team] have taken on board what we have been working on.’
Day also believed that from this match he would be able to see the players’ fitness level which had always been a concern for the Bangladesh team.
‘We want to achieve some match fitness which is needed and the boys to have a game against a strong side,’ he said.
‘So we can see where we are at as a team.’
Source: New Age.
