Booters take on Thai U-19s today

After going 2-1 down against Thai club Osotspa Saraburi in their first practice match outside the country, the Bangladesh national football team will be hoping to turn things around when they take on the Thailand U-19 national team in their second practice match at the Osotspa Stadium today.
Bangladesh are on a tour of Thailand, as part of their preparation for September's SAFF Championship, and these two matches are being played apart from the intensive camp, to test the graph of improvement of the booters. But the first test did not go well as they suffered the defeat against the fifth-place finishers of the Thai Premier League despite having control of the midfield in some phases. The strikers lost a few scoring chances, that led them to concede two goals before they pulled one back. The blame fell on the defenders, who believe they have learnt from their mistakes.
“To be honest, the opponents were very organised and stronger than us. We tried to execute our plans but they proved their maturity to take the game away from us. The match could have been different had our strikers availed the early chances. However, we have learnt a lot from the match and we will be trying to rectify those in the next match,” stopper Ariful Islam was quoted as saying after the practice session at the National Football Centre in Nangchok, Bangkok yesterday.
Left-back Yeamin Munna said that the cohesion among the players is gradually improving following one-month's preparation and that they have also been trying to build the game from the backline in line with the instructions of Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif.
De Kruif however is not too much concerned about the results of the practice matches; rather he is intent on injecting technical and tactical aspects into the team.
The 43-year old coach is also determined to watch how quickly his boys can adopt the techniques and tactics through the match against Thailand U-19 side today.
Meanwhile, first-choice wingers Zahid Hossain and Mobarak Hossain are both likely to miss the match due to injuries. Zahid missed the first match too due to the injury.