Day eyes steady rise

Bangladesh national football team coach Jamie Day said he would want to see the team make a steady rise in FIFA rankings by continuing the good work the team has done over the past two months or so. The national team is currently ranked 193rd, and the English coach said he would ideally like to see the team climb up to 180th in the near future.

“My target is now 180. If we aim and try hard for 150 and if we get to 160, 170 or 180, it's still an improvement,” the 38-year-old coach told reporters yesterday after having a meeting with the Bangladesh Football Federation president Kazi Salahuddin and National Teams' Committee chairman Kazi Nabil Ahmed.

After a long absence from competitive international football, Bangladesh participated in three tournaments over the last two months -- the Asian Games in Indonesia, the SAFF Championship and the Bangabandhu Gold Cup in Bangladesh. Although the Olympic team managed to seal a pre-quarterfinal berth in the Asian Games, the senior team failed to get out of the group stages in the SAFF Championship while losing in the semifinals of the just-concluded Bangabandhu Gold Cup. The coach obviously saw the performances, if not the results, as signs of improvement.

“I want to see big jumps in improvement, big rise in performances. The job for us now is that we have to find a way to keep going up in rankings, keeping this level up. We need to work out how we can achieve that,” Day said.

However, after a busy couple of months, there are no international engagements on the horizon for the booters, with only an international friendly against an yet-unknown opponent being lined up for the November international window. The coach, who will go back to England for a vacation today, said more international matches are needed for the team to improve constantly.

“Looking forward to November's international window, something we talked about and looks to what kind of game we are going to play and the team we want to play against. We want to play as many games we can and get the players used to playing international football games,” Day said.

The coach will pick the players for November's friendly after watching the second phase of the Federation Cup, which is expected to start from October 22. After that, the Bangladesh Premier League will be underway and the coaching staff will have to keep an eye on the players to make their picks. However, with the foreign players' quota once again increased to four, Day might not have an ideal opportunity to see the improvement of his charges, especially the forwards who have been woefully shy of scoring form.

The coach hinted that he would like to see more local players than foreign ones in the starting eleven of clubs. “The long-term plan is how to get our international players playing regularly, every single one of them. As a national coach, I want every player from midfield to defence to play regularly.”.