The Bangladesh football team will be eying nothing short of full three points as the joint qualification of the Fifa World Cup 2018 and Asian Cup 2019 Qualifiers gets underway today with their match against Kyrgyzstan.
Bangladesh played the Kirghiz only twice before and lost on both occasions, but the stage is different now as the men in red and green will be playing at home.
The match at the Bangabandhu National Stadium today at 5pm is a very important one for the home side as their prime target is to qualify for the Asian Cup and nothing beats a winning start. The overall performance has developed in the last two years under the tutelage of Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif but all efforts will go in vain if they do not perform at the big stage.
It has been around a month that the booters started practising together before playing Singapore and Afghanistan to put the finishing touch to their preparation while Kyrgyzstan trained in the United Arab Emirates for a week before arriving in Bangladesh. However, not playing a single international match in 11 months saw the Kirghiz sink 11 places below Bangladesh in the Fifa rankings.
“It’s only statistics (ranking),” said De Kruif yesterday. “I don’t care about it. The only thing that is important for me is getting three points tomorrow (today).” Kyrgyzstan head coach Aleksandr Krestinin also echoed his counterpart, saying, “At the moment we are not concerned about ranking as it doesn’t affect our team. Now, we are looking forward to the official tournament.”
De Kruif however, has a major headache with regards to the fitness of some of his players as winger Zahid Hossain is yet to recover from his stomach bug while expatriate footballer Reasat Khaton is out with muscle injury. Wahed Ahmed is also not in the squad. “When players are injured from the probable starting 11 we have to replace them from a category of players who don’t play regularly, don’t play on high level. It’s a bit of a concern,” De Kruif said.
Apart from the physical difference, Bangladesh will enjoy the home advantage. Despite been very hot and humid in the past several days, forecasts suggest a little bit of rain and the temperature is also likely to be down to the 20s.
All eyes will be on forwards Jahid Hasan Ameli and Enamul Haque but the whole team needs to play as a unit and hold on to the rhythm right till the final whistle. Kyrgyzstan comprises of seven players who play in the European leagues in Germany, Russia, Poland, Serbia and Ukraine.