The Bangladesh men’s Olympic squad started their preparation on Monday at the Bashundhara Kings Arena in the hopes of obtaining their best-ever achievements in the football competition that will be held at the Hangzhou Asian Games in China in just nine days.
Javier Cabrera, the coach of the Bangladesh national football team, will be given three more days in his homeland to continue training his players. After that, on September 15, the booters will depart for China, and on September 19, they will play their first match, which will be against Myanmar. After that, on September 21, they will compete against India, and on September 24, they will face the hosts, China.
Even though Cabrera was able to watch the national team, Bashundhara Kings, and the national U-23 sides compete in their international duty, the AFC Champions and AFC Asia Cup, and the AFC U-23 Asian Cup campaign respectively, he had a difficult time choosing the Olympic squad because there can only be three senior players on the team in addition to U-23 players.
Initially, Cabrera had included national team players such as Jamal Bhuyan, Mohammad Ibrahim, and Alomgir Mollah and three more premier league players into the 22-member squad. However, the coach decided to make six changes as he replaced them with Mojibur Rahman Jonny, Suman Reza, Shahin Ahammad, Jahid Hossain, Abu Shaeid, and Shahidul Islam. In addition, Cabrera added three more premier league players.
The men in red and green have only ever advanced past the group round of the football competition at the Asian Games once before, and that was during the most recent edition of the competition that was hosted in Jakarta. They did so by defeating Qatar 1-0 in their last group-stage encounter.
This time around, Bangladesh will be competing against the hosts, China, as well as Myanmar and India.
We will travel to China with the goal in mind of giving our best performance while we are there. We are aware that our team as a whole possesses a lot of talent, but at this point, our primary objective is to ensure that everyone of these players has the opportunity to develop their skills, so that we may achieve the best possible results in the tournament. Before beginning the first session, Cabrera shared with the media that this would be the primary focus of the meeting.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled and honored to be selected to participate in such a prestigious competition as the Asian Games. It is obvious that not all of the members of the group will be available, but I believe that this will be beneficial for the players who often do not get that much of an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. Because a large number of players are currently away with the Kings, and because Jamal is currently playing for Sol de Mayo, I believe it’s a perfect opportunity for this squad to keep competing and practicing,” stated the Spanish coach.