Bangladesh Under-23 national football team Lodewijk de Kruif was basking in pride after his team’s memorable win over Afghanistan in their opening match of the Asian Games in Incheon on Monday. Kruif was happy to see his charges play according to his plan of a counter-attack based football against an opposition who are far above them in the FIFA rankings. ‘All credit goes to the boys and it was a team performance. I think Afghanistan got two good chances including a penalty but they did not create any chances in the second half which shows our organisation in the second half and the players gave their 100 per cent to earn a win for the nation,’ said the Dutchman to reporters after the game.
Kruif also admitted he never thought that they will win against the Afghans.
‘It is a surprising result. It was an unexpected win. As a coach, I rely on the tactics and I am happy to earn three points.’
Even with the win, de Kruif was not sure about qualifying for the second round since they have to face two other strong opponents in Uzbekistan and Hong Kong in their next two matches.
‘It is difficult to say that we will advance to the second round because still there are two matches left. Uzbekistan are a strong team like Iran, Iraq, Korea and Japan and you can’t compare them with us. If we don’t earn any points against Hong Kong, who are also ahead of us in terms of ranking, there will be no possibility of qualifying for the next round,’ added Kruif.
Meanwhile, the hero the match Mamunul Islam gave credit to an organised defence for the win.
‘Our main plan was to organise our defence line perfectly and I want pay tribute to the defenders along with Jamal who helped the defence throughout the game,’ said Mamunul over telephone from Incheon.
‘As they [Afghanistan] are stronger than us as a team, we played counter-attack based football, though they held the ball possession most of the time but they failed to open up our solid defence. On the other hand, we tried to utilise the opportunities we got. If we could utilise those properly, we could have won the game by a bigger margin,’ said Mamunul.
He also believes that his winner against Afghanistan was the best in his nine-year international career.
‘No doubt this is the best ever goal in my career because with this goal my team managed a memorable win,’ said an ecstatic Mamunul, who recently signed a three-month contract with Indian Super League franchise Atletico De Kolkata.
-With New Age input
