Bangladesh national football team Fabio Lopez is confident that his players will reach the peak of their fitness in two months as he said they will ‘fly’ on the pitch. It has been only around a week that the newly appointed Italian trained his new charges while yesterday he witnessed their match fitness and skill level during a muddy affair between the Bangladesh national side and the Under-19s.
The national booters had to toil hard for a 1-0 victory against their younger opponents in a practice match at the water-clogged Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday afternoon. The initial 40-man squad is expected to be trimmed down to 29 who will attend the residential training camp in BKSP from September 27, following the three-day break for Eid-ul-Adha starting today.
“What you saw today you will forget it after two months. They will fly on the field,” expressed the 43-year-old Lopez who have trained the booters for the last five days at the BFF astro-turf and BNS.
Lopez tested 35 players yesterday throughout the 90 minutes and the only goal of the match came from Shahedul Alam Shahed Jnr, who was among the last set of substituted players in the second half, in the 65th minute.
The coach said he was impressed by the performance of each and every player, but also acknowledged the dominating effort put in by the Under-19s who had a better start compared to their seniors.
“We tried 35 players, split across three teams, I want to congratulate the Under-19 team because they really did very good job. I had very good test today because I saw that we have lot of job to do. Especially with the fitness,” said the Italian coach after the game.
“I’m not interested with the result because its a friendly match so I don’t care with the result. For me I was interested to see the players’ motivation, their technical skill and their tactical move what they did in the training sessions,” added Lopez.
