Can booters roll back the years?
Those days when the country's football fans could make a fair assumption of Bangladesh's results against opponents like the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka are long gone.
Those predictions would mostly be in favour of Bangladesh as the country boasted reliable forwards like Kazi Salahuddin, Enayetur Rahman, Sheikh Mohammad Aslam, Ashraf Uddin Ahmed Chunnu, Imtiaz Ahmed Nakib, Alfaz Ahmed among many others.
However, probably only a handful dare to bet on Bangladesh when the men in red and green take on the same opponents nowadays. And the reason could be the absence of genuine strikers in this Bangladesh side.
Bangladesh are all set to take on Nepal today in a bid to make it to the final of the SAFF Championship for the first time in 16 years.
Bangladesh defeated Nepal in four editions of the regional championship -- in 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2005 respectively. But their failure to even score a single goal in their defeats to the same opposition in 2011, 2013 and 2018 goes a long way to show how Bangladesh's prowess in front of goal has diminished over the years.
Forward Rizvi Ahmed's brace gave Bangladesh a 2-0 win over Nepal in the 1995 edition before goals from Mizanur Rahman and Alfaz Ahmed helped the booters to a 2-1 win over Nepal in the semifinal of the 1999 edition.
It was Alfaz's long-range strike in 2003 and a brace from striker Rokonuzzaman Kanchan in 2005 that helped Bangladesh beat Nepal and keep a perfect record against them till that edition of the tournament.
Surprisingly, skipper Jamal Bhuiyan is not sweating over who will come up with the winner against Nepal even though it took strikes from defenders Tapu Barman and Yeasin Khan to beat Sri Lanka and clinch a crucial draw against India.
"For me, it doesn't matter who scores. Even if we win 1-0, I will be happy. It is the media who are making a fuss over who is going to score. The most important thing to me is that we win," Jamal said.
Meanwhile, coach Oscar Bruzon thought that the team would need to make most of their set-pieces against Nepal.
"If you analyse, you can see that all of our goals in the tournament came through transitions, counter-attacks and set-pieces. Tomorrow [Wednesday] we are going to work in these areas and I think having control of the ball is going to be crucial for us," said Bruzon.
Comments