As his team prepares to face the men in red and green in the first semifinal of the SAFF Championship on Saturday in Bengaluru, Kuwait coach Bento feels that Bangladesh has raised their level of play in comparison to the previous month. Bangladesh’s colors are red and green.
Kuwait, a team that was invited to participate in the competition and has the third-highest ranking in the competition after India and Lebanon, blasted its way into the semifinals with victories over Pakistan and Nepal and a draw against India. In just three games, they have managed to score eight goals. In contrast, Bangladesh overcame a loss in the first match they played against Lebanon to get to the semifinals with two victories in sudden death overtime.
Rui Bento has stated that he would not be disrespecting Bangladesh in any way.
“I believe that the Bangladesh squad was able to get their level up over the past month, and I am hoping for a game that is competitive. When teams fail to show proper respect for their rivals, they almost always run into difficulties. It is imperative that we get our guys ready for the contest.
At a pre-match press conference held in Bengaluru, the Portuguese head coach stated that his team needed to “understand what is the best point of Bangladesh and we need to understand how we can imbalance Bangladesh tomorrow.”
Bento said that, in his perspective, there is no such thing as a simple game in football and that he did not believe the semifinal would be as difficult as the games against Nepal and Pakistan.
You have to keep an eye on the future because every team is interested in developing themselves, and many foreign coaches are coming from Europe. In the end, there is nothing simple about it. My point of view is that we ought to start constructing the game right from the beginning of the game.
“We need to respect Bangladesh, and we will approach the game in the same manner that we approach past games. Despite the success we had in the group stage, we still need to give it our all out on the field. Bento emphasized the need of putting forth a lot of effort.
At the senior level, Bangladesh has never been successful against Kuwait, suffering defeats in both the Merdeka Cup in 1973 and the Seoul Asian Games in 1986 by scores of 2-1 and 4-0 respectively. Despite this, the Bangladesh U-19 team prevailed over their Kuwaiti opponents in the AFC U-19 Championship Qualifiers in 2013, winning 1-0.