Hosts have eyes on title
The journey of women's football in Bangladesh did not start too long ago, but the girls in red and green have already made a mark with their brilliant and brave performance at international level, especially in under-14 and under-16 competitions.
Winning back-to-back titles of AFC U-14 Girls' Regional (South and Central) Championship in 2015 and 2016 and the under-16 team's progress into the final round of AFC U-16 Women's Championship have installed a belief among the players and management that they can compete against other teams and win at international level.
Hence for the first time the Bangladesh team management and coaching staff were confident in announcing that they would embark on the inaugural SAFF U-15 Championship, scheduled to be held in Dhaka from December 17 to 24, with the target of winning the title.
Since AFC has scrapped its U-14 Girls Championship after FIFA came forward to help regional football bodies arrange age-group tournaments, the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) is holding the first under-15 level tournament for girls to develop women's football in the region.
Apart from Bangladesh, regional powerhouse India, Nepal and Bhutan will take part in the round-robin league format matches, with the top two teams to eventually play in the final.
Hosts Bangladesh are considered favourites for the title because of the strength of their under-15 team, which features 11 players who played in AFC U-16 Women's Championship in Thailand three months ago. Four other players of the team have experience of playing international matches at under-14 level. Moreover, the 15 members of the squad had won the AFC U-14 Girls' Regional Championship in Tajikistan two years ago where they had scored plenty of goals against teams like Nepal, Tajikistan and India.
“We have improved much and played good football in Thailand, but the people of the country did not get to watch us. Now it is an opportunity to show our performance at home and entertain the spectators and win the championship,” the team's centre-back Akhi Khatun said at a press conference arranged in this regard at the BFF House yesterday.
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