Bhutan’s performance in their match against Maldives in the SAFF Championship Group B was far more impressive to Bangladesh’s Spanish coach Javier Cabrera than Bangladesh’s performance.
The charges of Cabrera, who have already conquered the obstacle of the Maldives by winning against them for the first time in the regional football spectacular in 20 years, now face the difficulty of conquering Bhutan in order to advance to the semifinals, which is the aim of the booters’ competition.
After suffering consecutive losses to Maldives and Lebanon, Bhutan now sits in last place in the four-team group they are a part of. In spite of the fact that they lost both of their group matches, Bhutan is still holding out hope that they would be able to participate in the semifinals. In order to accomplish this goal, they must first win their last group match against Bangladesh and then hope that Lebanon will prevail against Maldives. If this occurs, then Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Maldives will all have three points each in the standings.
We have not yet finished our portion of the competition. In the last match [against Bangladesh], we aim to win by as many points as possible. Following yesterday night’s 4-1 loss against Lebanon, Bhutan head coach Pema said that the team’s desire and concentration would be on achieving that goal.
“Because everyone in our group [B] is excellent and strong, Bangladesh is not going to be a simple opponent for us to win. Because we don’t want to give up hope, let’s wait and see what the future holds. The Bhutanese head coach said, “At the very least, we will give one hundred percent against Bangladesh, and that will be all.”
After falling down by four against Lebanon, Bhutan was able to come back, however it seems that coach Pema was not pleased with the penalty shot that Chencho Gyeltshen missed.
When Pema was asked how Bangladesh should be rated after playing two matches, he responded by saying that Bangladesh are “not bad, they are also a good side.” Nevertheless, I believe that their defense is Bangladesh’s primary area of strength.
The final match of the SAFF Championship is one that Bhutan has never participated in. Bhutan finished the competition with a record of only one victory and one tie after competing in a total of 24 matches.
The one victory they’ve ever had was over Afghanistan in the SAFF Championship in 2008. In that competition, they played Bangladesh to a draw, which allowed them to go to the semifinals for the first time.
Bangladesh has faced Bhutan in a total of 13 matches up to this point, suffering defeat in just one of those contests. During the 2016 AFC Asian Cup pre-qualifiers, Bhutan defeated Bangladesh by a score of 3-1. The match took place in Bhutan.