Forwards vow to be more lethal
Bangladesh striker Sirat Jahan Swapna is looking to work on her mistakes in order to be more accurate in front of goal despite scoring one of the two goals against United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their opening match of the Bagamata U-19 Women’s International Gold Cup on Monday.
“We tried and created opportunities but missed the opportunities. Now we will try to rectify those mistakes in training and cash in on the opportunities in next matches,” Swapna said after yesterday’s recovery session at the BFF astroturf.
The Bangladesh team squandered a lot of scoring chances against UAE, a team against whom they scored 17 goals in last three meetings of the AFC U-16 Women’s Championship Qualifiers, due to lack of composure in the attacking third. Besides, the forwards looked to play individually instead of helping each other to extend the winning margin.
“The most important thing for us is to play for the team and help the team win the match rather than concentrating on who is going to be the highest scorer in the tournament. We want more goals and it doesn’t matter who scores as we want to increase the winning margin in every match,” Swapna said.
The speedy striker was a bit upset about squandering the scoring chances but promised to score more goals in the next match against Kyrgyzstan on Friday.
“The weakest point of yesterday’s [Monday] match was missing the scoring chances. It is obvious to feel sad when you miss chances, but what happened is past and we are looking forward to be more focused on the next match,” said Swapna.
Captain Misrat Jahan Moushumi is, however, not too worried about the opportunities missed, rather she wants the team to focus on the next match.
“We must admit that we made some mistakes upfront because we converted only two chances despite producing a lot of scoring opportunities. We don’t want to dwell in past, though, as we are looking forward to rectifying those mistakes from the next match,” said Moushumi.
“We tried to give our hundred percent against UAE but there were mistakes in finishing. It is being said that some of us played individually but that is not true because we always makes promises among us not to play selfishly,” said the midfielder adding that they also discuss among themselves regarding the mistakes they make in each match. Moushumi believes this tournament is a big platform to show their class in front of home crowd and that they are determined to display their best performance in the tournament.
“This tournament is something big for us as we are playing on home ground in front of home crowd. This tournament is also inspiring for all girls, so there is no pressure on us,” Moushumi said, adding that they are taking Kyrgyzstan as a strong opponent.