Bangladesh coach Lodewijk de Kruif blamed his defenders for a big defeat against Jordan despite their spirited show in their World Cup qualifying match at the Bangabandhu National Stadium on Tuesday. Buoyed on by their home advantage, Bangladesh took a positive approach in the game attacking Jordan, ranking-wise a much superior side, whenever they had an opportunity, but their defensive fragility means the hosts conceded two goals in each half to suffer a 0-4 defeat.
Defender Atiqur Rahman Meshu, who was playing as an extra-defender, committed the first blunder when he needlessly handled the ball inside the danger zone to give Jordan a penalty in the 14th minute.
‘When you make such kind of mistakes at this level and also can’t convert the chances that comes to your way, you cannot expect to win a game like this,’ said a frustrated Kruif.
‘We did not play that bad in the first-half. Nothing went wrong expect the two goals for defensive mistakes which were ridiculous.
‘About the first goal, the first mistake was letting the ball bounce when you clear it and that too inside the 18-yard box. [And then]Somebody was trying to play football with arms.
‘It’s penalty kick. I don’t know where it came from but it has to do with maturity,’ said Kruif.
‘And the second goal is also a Santa Claus present because inside the box we needed to clear the ball at the first chance but we could not do that. We gave way the game at that moment.’
Kruif also admitted his backline was suffering with fitness problems.
‘Lack of concentration and fitness left my team suffer. I think Munna [Yeamin Ahmed] was not able to play for 90 minutes, Meshu [Atiqur Rahman] was tired, Yeasin [Khan] was also very tired and all they could do was apologise to me after the game,’ he said.
Kruif was also frustrated with his forwards, who wasted a handful of chances.
‘We created three 100 per cent chances [in the first-half] but we missed all of them,’ said Kruif.
‘I told Yeasin during the pre-match meeting that he will get that ball and it came to him as I expected. But he blew it away,’ Kruif said, referring to defender’s header wide above the post off a Mamunul corner.
‘With a little bit of luck and good organisation, we could have drawn or lose by 1-0 or 2-1. We did not deserve this big defeat.’
Bangladesh will face Kyrgyzstan in their fifth qualifiers match in Bishkek on October 13.
-With New Age input
