‘Indian players more confident than us’

Having played the AFC Cup in Maldives, Bangladesh Premier League champions Bashundhara Kings returned home five days ago before their nine footballers, including key player Tapu Barman, headed to Bishkek with the Bangladesh national football team to take part in the Three Nations Cup involving hosts Kyrgyzstan and Palestine.

Bashundhara Kings' captain Tapu expressed his satisfaction with his latest campaign where Kings finished second behind group champions ATK Mohun Bagan, and he also deemed Indian footballers' confidence to be higher than Bangladeshi players, while sharing his experience of AFC Cup with The Daily Star on the eve of departure for Kyrgyzstan on Saturday.

"We had positive performances throughout the AFC Cup and deserved to progress to next round but it wasn't possible to compete with 10 players against a strong team like ATK Mohun Bagan.

"If we had played with 11 players in second half, then we would've had a great chance to qualify for the knockout stage by preventing Mohun Bagan from levelling and creating more opportunities for ourselves to widen the margin, instead. However, I'm pleased with our AFC Cup performance," opined Tapu.

Tapu believed the referee killed off the match after ordering defender Sushanta Tripura a marching order in the last moment of the first half following a bookable offense.

Kings returned with heads held high after remaining unbeaten in three Group D matches of AFC Cup in which they beat Maziya S&RC 2-0 before being held to a goalless draw against Bengaluru FC. And finally, their hopes of progressing into the knockout stage in their maiden appearance ended after surrendering a lead to play out a 1-1 draw against Mohun Bagan, who ultimately qualified.

Replying to a query, central back Tapu said, "I think there is no big difference between Bangladesh and subcontinent nations of India and Maldives. If you see Mohun Bagan, they have six to seven Indian national players like central-back Subhasish, left-back Pritom Kotal, Manvir, Amrinder, Lenny, Aushutosh Mehta, against whom there was no big difference in performance rather we played better, I think."

Tapu also reckons that Indian players gained such overall maturity because of playing competitive matches of Indian Super League while the Bangladesh national players played hardly a few competitive matches of Bangladesh Premier League.

"The Indian players are high in confidence from playing Indian Super League because maximum foreign recruits there are of good quality and the local players cashed in by playing with them. I don't think we are trailing behind them however, I admit that some of our players get nervous in the international matches. If you look back at the World Cup Qualifying match against India in Qatar, we all looked immature whereas they played really well.

"Due to lack of match temperament, a few of our players can't hold their concentration for full 90 minutes, so it hampers our strength where we are punished for silly mistakes in international matches," said Tapu, who believes playing against Kyrgyzstan and Palestine in Three Nations Cup would be of great help before SAFF Championship in October.