Bangladesh Under-23 national football team will kick off their Asian Games campaign against their Afghan opponents at the Incheon Munhak Stadium in South Korea today.
This will also be the first time that Bangladesh will take on Afghanistan since the final of the 2010 Dhaka South Asian Games, in which they thrashed the Afghans 4-0 to lift the gold medal.
The Group B match will be telecast live by Ten Sports from 2:00pm.
Though Afghanistan are the current SAFF champions and their team contains seven Germany-based and one Australia-based players, Bangladesh can take some pride as they have never lost to them in their previous four meetings. Bangladesh won one and drew the other three.
So, Bangladesh national team coach Lodewijk de Kruif is keeping his faith in his charges and thinks that if they can remain well organised for the full 90 minutes then anything is possible.
Afghanistan are participating in the Asian Games for the first time, but they will be clear favourites for today’s game due to their recent performances.
Afghan football has radically changed in the last three or four years after a group of expatriate players joined the national team.
But de Kruif was aware of the strength of his opponents and tried to prepare his charges by analysing the strengths and weaknesses of them after watching their performances in the AFC Challenge Cup finals.
‘Seven Afghan players are based in Germany and one is from Australia. So they are few steps ahead of us,’ de Kruif told reporters after a one-and-a-half-hour training session at the ground adjacent to Goyong Stadium on Sunday.
‘I am trying to prepare my players tactically and mentally and since it is football, anything can happen on the day,’ Kruif said.
‘The expectation from Bangladesh team is very high but that is not realistic. We have to face the reality that we are 170th ranked side in the world and we are not even one of the favourites in our group. And we are far behind the other three teams [Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Hong Kong] in our group.’
De Kruif also tried to reduce the pressure on his players by keeping the Afghans ahead in the today’s match saying: ‘Surely we are not the leading team but we have come here to get some good results.’
Meanwhile, in the training session Bangladesh team emphasised on their defence since they lost the services of Atiqur Rahman Meshu through injury.
So, it seems that Raihan Hasan may take place of Meshu alongside Yasin Khan while Yamin Munna and Tapu Barman along with the others to defend the fort.
-With New Age input
