Booters eye back-to-back victories
Bangladesh are looking forward to tasting consecutive victories after a long time when they square off against Seychelles in the second FIFA friendly match at the Sylhet District Stadium today.
The match will get underway at 3:45pm, with satellite channel T-Sports telecasting the game live from the venue.
Bangladesh won the first of the two matches 1-0 and they won't want to repeat the mistakes they made last September when they lost 3-1 against Nepal after beating Cambodia 1-0 in back-to-back friendly matches.
The last time the men in red and green tasted back-to-back victories was four years ago when they beat Bhutan 4-1 and 2-0 in two FIFA friendly matches in Dhaka under Jamie Day, who also guided the team to another back-to-back wins against Bhutan and Pakistan during the SAFF Championship in Dhaka in 2018.
"Everyone is aware of the whole objective which has not been achieved yet. We have come to Sylhet to win both matches but we are halfway there," Bangladesh coach Javier Cabrera said yesterday.
"We don't want to make the same mistakes we made last September and everyone is aware of it and everyone knows we are going to face challenge again as we faced the day before yesterday," the Spaniard added.
Seychelles are expected to come stronger in the second match, especially given their second-half performance in the first match. Bangladesh are ready to deal with the challenge though.
"I think tomorrow's match is going to be more challenging and tough for us because Seychellois, who are ahead of us physically, will also come to win the match. They are likely to play attacking football and in that case we should take chances on the break," said captain Jamal Bhuiyan.
Seychelles' coach and captain appeared more confident than their counterparts as they vowed to win the second match.
"We will definitely go for a win because the team spirit is quite high and we believe we can play much better than we played in the first match and we can win the game," said coach Neville Both, adding that they would bring three to four changes to their playing eleven.
The 53-year-old coach also explained how they want to win over Bangladesh.
"I think Bangladesh is a technical team and they have analysed our game and we also analysed their game. They have some strong points but they have some weak points too, so we will try to gain some advantages from their weakness. And I think if we try to play more aggressively, that will be one weapon to win the game," said Neville.
Captain Stenio Marie said, "We are not far behind them. The first half of the game was not kind of our play, maybe the second half was our identity of play. The defence is our strong point but if we go for goals like Bangladesh, we can do better than Bangladesh."
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