Bangladesh national football team reached Australia on Sunday for their World Cup qualifying match along with confidence that they incurred through their creditable draw against Malaysia in an international friendly at Kuala Lumpur a couple days back. Leaders of Bangladesh Welfare Association at Perth received the team once they reached Western Australian capital for September 3 qualifiers scheduled to take place at 3:30pm local time.
Though Bangladesh took an ultra-defensive approach to hold Malaysia, players said the match gave them a valuable experience that will be useful against reigning Asian champions.
Denmark based midfielder Jamal Bhuiyan said the match gave them a reality check as they came to realise their actual strength before facing the mighty Australians.
‘This match was good for us because some of our players haven’t played for two or three months,’ the midfielder told reporters in Perth.
‘It was good for gelling us into a unit. And we played a good match too. We know Australia is a much stronger team, so we have to be adequately prepared.’
Right-back Nasirul Islam Nasir admitted that instead of trying to score they mostly concentrated on organise the defense and not concede any goal, a strategy they likely to apply against Australia.
‘The [Malaysia] match was challenging for us,’ said the Abahani defender. Our target was not to concede a goal and we were successful in doing that.’
‘We tried to produce a good result to boost our confidence and the draw against Malaysia is what we expected. I think it will help us to give a better show against Australia.’
Goalkeeper Shahidul Alam Sohel, who rescued the team several occasions with his brilliant keeping, expressed his gratitude to the German goalkeeping coach Christian Schweichler for his eye-catching performance.
‘Our goalkeeper coach [Schweichler] worked really very hard with all goalkeepers and my performance was the outcome of that hard work,’ said the goalkeeper.
‘We all will be trying to do something better because Australia are stronger side’, he added.
-With New Age input
