Can Bangladesh maintain unbeaten record at Kings Arena?
After being outplayed by Palestine in the away match of the World Cup Qualifiers, Bangladesh are seeking motivation for Tuesday's home match against the same opposition on home ground and in front of home crowd.
The Bashundhara Kings Arena has so far been a lucky venue for the Men in Red and Green, who have not yet lost in four international matches hosted here, starting with two friendlies against Afghanistan in September last year. Both of those matches ended in draws before the hosts beat Maldives and then drew against Lebanon.
The results could be attributed to the constant improvement in performance of the team since the SAFF Championship in the middle of last year. Furthermore, the familiarity of Bashundhara Kings players, who make up a large portion of the national team, is another cause for the good performances at this venue.
Another factor that might work in Bangladesh's favour and to the disadvantage of the visitors is that the home fixture will be held under natural light and the hot and humid weather in Dhaka might cause problem to the Palestine team.
"We could not do many things in the away match and we want to forget it. Now we are looking forward to our own performance which we usually display on home ground. We will definitely try out best in front of our home crowd," midfielder Sohel Rana, who missed the previous match due to suspension, told the media a couple of days ago.
Bangladesh fought neck and neck with Palestine for the first 40 minutes in Kuwait with almost the same intensity as the opposition but their intensity dropped big time once they conceded the first of the five goals in the 43rd minute.
Sohel admitted that silly mistakes in defence hurt them heavily and that they are trying to rectify those issues in training.
Although the charges of Javier Cabrera staged strong comebacks against Maldives, Afghanistan and Lebanon last year, they failed to do so against Palestine last week. So it will be interesting to see how Cabrera motivates his charges and whether he sticks with the ploy of playing high-line defence against a team who are 86th places higher than his.
Bangladesh can take inspiration from a few of their previous World Cup Qualifying fixtures at home – a 2-1 win against Indonesia in the 1986 World Cup Qualifiers following a 2-0 defeat, a 1-0 win against Thailand following a 3-0 away defeat in the same campaign and a 2-0 home win against Lebanon following a 4-0 away defeat during the 2014 World Cup Qualifiers.