Bangladesh football team want to get better against the Socceroos at home as the second-leg with the giants of Asia in the World Cup qualifiers kicks off at Kings Arena Thursday at 4:45pm.
The first leg in what was Bangladesh’s away tie ended in a 7-0 thrashing in Australia’s favor last November.
It came less than a month after Bangladesh defeated higher-ranked Maldives at home followed by a creditable draw away.
After the Australia defeat, the men in red and green earned another laudable draw against Lebanon at Kings Arena as the national stadium was under construction.
A boost to Javier Cabrera’s confidence ahead of the tough test against the top-ranked side in Group I was the return of defender Tariq Raihan Kazi alongside forward Sheikh Morsalin after injury kept them out of the two Palestine matches in March.
“Preparation has been short but quite positive. I’m excited to have a great opportunity playing against one of the best teams in world,” said Cabrera at the pre-match conference Wednesday.
“We have always been quite strong at home. Looking forward to a great match not only for us but also for the supporters,” the Spanish head coach added.
Cabrera also said the team want to execute the lessons from the big-margin defeat in Melbourne during the away encounter.
“We had good moments in there but definitely we struggled for different reasons, one of them is we conceded early which we can avoid,” said the Bangladesh coach while replying to a query.
He added: “Definitely trying to improve what we did before. We want to show the fans that we can be competitive against any team at home. We want to make things difficult for the opponents.”
Australia’s experienced coach Graham Arnold talked about a “good preparation” in Thailand before flying to Dhaka and concluded with his side’s objective “to get the job done” with all three points.