Bangladesh Under-23 national football team Lodewijk de Kruif was basking in pride after his team\u2019s memorable win over Afghanistan in their opening match of the Asian Games in Incheon on Monday.\u00a0Kruif 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.\u00a0\u2018All 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,\u2019 said the Dutchman to reporters after the game.
\nKruif also admitted he never thought that they will win against the Afghans.
\n\u2018It 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.\u2019
\nEven 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.
\n\u2018It 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\u2019t compare them with us. If we don\u2019t 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,\u2019 added Kruif.
\nMeanwhile, the hero the match Mamunul Islam gave credit to an organised defence for the win.
\n\u2018Our 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,\u2019 said Mamunul over telephone from Incheon.
\n\u2018As 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,\u2019 said Mamunul.
\nHe also believes that his winner against Afghanistan was the best in his nine-year international career.
\n\u2018No doubt this is the best ever goal in my career because with this goal my team managed a memorable win,\u2019 said an ecstatic Mamunul, who recently signed a three-month contract with Indian Super League franchise Atletico De Kolkata.<\/p>\n

-With New Age<\/strong> input<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bangladesh Under-23 national football team Lodewijk de Kruif was basking in pride after his team\u2019s memorable win over Afghanistan in their opening match of the Asian Games in Incheon on Monday.\u00a0Kruif 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n