National women's team set for Olympic Qualifiers
The Bangladesh women's team will return to business when they take part in Round-1 of the 2020 Olympic Qualifiers in Myanmar with their target set on winning at least one match.
Although the girls in red and green have been participating in age-group tournaments, the senior team rarely get opportunities to play international matches.
It has been 20 months since the girls played at an international competition, the last of which was the three-nation tournament involving Singapore and Malaysia in February, 2017 where they lost both their matches.
Bangladesh will leave for Myanmar this morning and the Qualifiers will get underway on November 8 at Thuwunna Stadium in Yangon.
There is virtually no difference between the Bangladesh women's national team and the age-group team though as aside from captain Sabina Khatun, the rest of the team is made up of under-18 players.
Bangladesh, currently not ranked by FIFA due to inactivity, were been placed in Group C alongside 44th ranked Myanmar, 59th ranked India and 108th ranked Nepal. The four group champions and the two best runners-up will advance to Qualifiers Round-2.
“When the experience and ages of the players is compared, we trail three other opponents but the positive thing is that the girls have shown their fighting attitude in the last two years at different age-group tournaments and we want to keep this fighting spirit intact and thus gather experience from the tournament,” said coach Golam Rabbani Choton on the eve of their departure.
“We don't have any experience of playing against favourites Myanmar but they are expected to be as strong as the South Korean U-19 team while we know quite well about India and Nepal. All three teams are ahead of us but we want to win a match either against Nepal or India,” Choton informed.
The coach also believes that the team's recent participation in the AFC U-19 Women's Championship will help them perform much better in the Olympic Qualifiers, which Choton is considering to be a preparation for the upcoming SAFF Women's Championship.
“We last played against India and Nepal in early 2016 during the SAFF Championship. Now we want to see them ahead of the next SAFF Championship,” said Choton.
Comments