Needed one per cent more

Coming from a lacklustre 1-3 defeat against Kyrgyzstan in their opening fixture, Bangladesh showed character and played some scintillating football against Tajikistan in their second match at the Bangabandhu National yesterday.

But for all the possession and enterprise, all they could show for in the end was a single point, thanks to profligacy of the forwards and not being able to keep their calm in face of opposition attacks.

Bangladesh coach Saiful Bari, who was standing in the dugout in absence of suspended head coach Lodewijk de Kruif, felt luck was not on their side even while praising the players' whole-hearted effort for the enterprising performance.

“I am proud with the way the players executed the game-plan. They gave their 100 percent effort there:  from goalkeeper (Rasel Mahmud) Liton to striker (Zahid Hasan) Emily; everyone was superb and I must mention the name of Jewel Rana too, who gave his all in the match,” said Titu at the post-match briefing.

“But there is a one percent thing beyond the 100 percent effort and that one percent is luck, which was not with us today,” added Titu.

The veteran coach believed the first free-kick, which had resulted in the equalising kick, was not justified for he thought it was a fair challenge on air from Emily and he believed that the Tajikistan player deceived the referee to win the free-kick.

Titu also explained Bangladesh's vastly improved performance against Tajikistan, who sit 27 places above Bangladesh in the FIFA rankings.

“The mobility between the forwards and midfielders was the key to this performance and I think the Tajikistan players were less skillful than the Kyrgyzstan players,” said Titu, who also lamented the absence in these two matches of veteran winger Zahid Hossain due to illness.

Tajikistan coach Mukhsin Mukhamadiev was seemingly also thought his team was unlucky not to have grabbed full points from this match.

“Bangladesh showed their passion but we had bad luck because we could not avail four scoring chances,” said Mukhamadiev adding that his players could not put up their natural game due to fatigue of flying for 21 hours and also due to the heavy traffic and humid weather in Dhaka.

He however promised that Bangladesh will face a different side when they travel to Tajikistan for the away match on November 25 this year.