All-conquering girls set for a new challenge
Although they skipped the last two editions of the AFC U-19 Women's Championship Qualifiers following a shortage of players to form a squad, the Bangladesh under-19 women's football team are all set to participate in the competition after a six six-year gap and with hopes of qualifying for the second round.
The girls in red and green are scheduled to leave for Tajikistan in the early hours today. Tajikistan will host the Group D fixtures, featuring South Korea, Chinese Taipei, Bangladesh and Tajikistan.
Bangladesh's campaign is set to begin on October 24th against South Korea.
A total of 25 countries, split into six groups, will play round-robin matches before the champions of each group as well as the two best runners-up will advance to the second round of qualification, where they will be split into two groups.
After that, the top two teams from each group will progress to the final round, which will take place in Thailand next year.
When Bangladesh had first participated in the AFC U-19 Women's Championship Qualifiers in 2012 in Malaysia, they were eliminated from the group stages with a bottom-place finish among three teams.
In that edition, Bangladesh were beaten by India and Uzbekistan 1-0 and 2-0 respectively. After that, Bangladesh failed to form squads for the 2015 and 2017 editions due to the shortage of players and subsequently missed the tournaments.
However, the scenario for women's football in the country has changed drastically since 2016 as that was the year that Bangladesh emerged group champions in Dhaka to qualify for the 2017 AFC U-16 Women's Championship. And now, those same girls are ready to try their luck in the next level of Asian football.
These girls have been together for nearly three years and in that time they have played a few international tournaments such as the SAFF U-15 Women's Championship twice, SAFF U-18 Women's Championship, AFC U-16 Women's Championship Qualifiers and a Four-Nation U-15 women's Tournament in Hong Kong between December 2017 and October 2018. And barring the 2017 SAFF U-15 Women's Championship, they emerged as champions in all those competitions.
In the past year Bangladesh, comprised of under-16 and 19 team players as well as a few senior footballers, participated in only the SAFF U-18 Women's Championship but they clinched the title of the regional football extravaganza nonetheless.
“This group of girls played competitive matches in Bhutan this month to win the SAFF U-18 Women's Championship and it is a big inspiration for them to do well in Tajikistan. If the girls believe that they can do well, then the tournament will be easy although AFC Qualifying rounds are more challenging than the SAFF Championship,” said coach Golam Rabbani Choton at a press conference at the BFF House yesterday.
“South Korea are a very strong team who play in the FIFA World Cup. So we want to perform better against them and try to beat Chinese Taipei and Tajikistan to finish at least as group runners-up, thus staying in the race to become one of the two best runners-up among six groups to progress to the next round,” explained Choton.