Aminul looking forward
A distressed Bangladesh national football team returned home yesterday after finishing their AFC Challenge Cup finals campaign on a low with an embarrassing 3-0 defeat to hosts Sri Lanka in their last encounter.
Before the start of the third edition of the third-tier Asian nations' meet in Colombo, Bangladesh had set their sights on the semifinals. They made an astonishing start with a 2-1 win over inaugural meet's champions Tajikistan and gave neighbours Myanmar a scare before going down 1-2 in the second match.
Bangladesh's performance in the first two matches had intensified expectation of qualifying for the last four before facing Sri Lanka, but they frustrated all to go 3-0 down to exit tamely from the tournament.
Captain Aminul Haque blamed the worst defeat against Sri Lanka on the hot weather as well as tiredness of the players though coach Saiful Bari Titu had earlier said that the players took on too much pressure and thereby collapsed to Sri Lanka.
"We played excellent football in the first two matches against Tajikistan and Myanmar, but could not justify our real strength against Sri Lanka because of the hot weather as well as the booters' tiredness following their involvement in eight international matches in 20 days," said Aminul at the Dhaka International Airport.
The booters looked gloomy when they came out from the Zia International Airport and walked straight for the carriers and Aminul talked to the reporters as coach Saiful Bari Titu did not accompany the team and is scheduled to arrive here today.
It is emerging as a trend that Bangladeshi booters always collapse in the crucial matches. Such as, they under the supervision of Edson Silva Dido failed to produce their best against Myanmar and went 2-1 down in qualifying round of the AFC Challenge Cup at home despite having won the first two games against Macao and Cambodia and again while coached by Shahidur Rahman Shantoo looked dead and buried against India in the SAFF Championship semifinal and went 1-0 down to end a promising start.
Refuting the claim, Aminul said that the players did not feel any pressure.
"We always play for a win and never feel any pressure," country's number one goalkeeper said. "We lost to India because of a lack of practice and to Sri Lanka due to weather and the tiredness of the players."
The backline was the main concern for Bangladesh in the match against Sri Lanka as coach Titu opted to play striker Nasiruddin as a defender in place of the suspended Rezaul Karim and kept real defender Mamun Mia out of the starting eleven and the decision was later proved wrong as Sri Lanka launched their most attack through wing of Nasiruddin.
Aminul also defended his coach's decision to field Nasiruddin instead of Mamun Mia and said the decision of the coach was not wrong. The goalkeeper also thought that his sending-off decision by the referee was a part of the game.
The Mohammedan custodian, however, said Bangladesh football is in the right track and that Bangladesh football would go far if the players could keep the style they adopted from departed coach Zoran Djordjevic.
Aminul also found a positive thing from the AFC Challenge Cup and they wanted to keep it intact.
"What we achieved from the tournament is that we showed our consistent performance in big matches against Tajikistan and Myanmar and we are hoping to keep the momentum in the next international engagements."
Comments