Focus on set plays

Winger Zahid Hossain (L) curves one over the wall during the national football team's practice session at the Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday. PHOTO: STAR

Set-pieces too often play an important part in deciding the outcome of close matches in football. A cleverly taken free-kick or an intelligently swerved corner kick often results in the deadlock breaking moments in international football where open play might have failed to provide the opener. But for Bangladesh, the set-pieces hardly ever come as the rescuer. While there is a clear lack of exploiting skills of the set-pieces among our strikers, the defending against such set-pieces often become an issue of embarrassment.
With that thing in mind, the national team's Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif emphasized on the techniques and tactics required to successfully exploit and at the same time defend set-pieces, during a two-hour practice session, at the Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday.
But the coach refused to talk about the details of his plans or what sort of progress has been made and what areas make him concerned.
“I don't want to step into details. You saw the training session today, everything will be on paper and television tomorrow which is what I don't like because our opponents are also reading, looking around and collecting information.”
After a brief session which was confined to passing the ball among the players, the Dutch coach took his charges to the set-piece session. Corner kicks, free-kicks from the edge of the box and free-kicks from the side of the box were used to exploit and rectify the weaknesses of the defenders. Striker Zahid Hasan Emily, Toklish Ahmed, winger Zahid Hossain and midfielder Mamunul Islam were lined up to take the free-kicks, with Zahid being more accurate than the others. The coach later showed his defenders how to set up the wall, and what to do to the striker does not have a clear sight of the goal or does not get an easy curve over or through the wall.
The coach however said that he is overall satisfied with the progress made even though the concentration and understanding between the players is fluctuating from session to session.
“I was happy with yesterday's practice, but not with today's. There were lapses in concentration today during the first part of the practice. Then when we trained on set-pieces, things were satisfactory. There have been ups and downs in training,” De Kruif said.
“We are doing a lot, we are working very hard and trying to give the players all the necessary information. But there are areas that need to be improved for sure,” added De Kruif.