On the opening day of the training session yesterday, Bangladesh coach Javier Cabrera set his sights on the semifinal spot of the relatively difficult SAFF Championship. It is believed that the decades-long goal-scoring problem of the national football team would play a role in the thoughts of the Spaniard as he prepares for the competition.
The men who play in red and green have never advanced out of the group stage in any of the previous five iterations of the regional football spectacular, and the 2017 14th SAFF Championship is anticipated to be more difficult owing to the participation of two teams from the middle east: Lebanon and Kuwait.
Bangladesh, winners of the tournament in 2003, were placed in the same pot with the top-ranked team in the competition, Lebanon, as well as two-time winners Maldives and Bhutan.
The lack of goals scored by the national football team of Bangladesh in their most recent international matches is evidence of how much they struggled in those encounters. In order for the national football team of Bangladesh to advance out of the group stage, the forwards will need to play crucial roles.
Mohammad Ibrahim, Rakib Hossain, Sazzad Hossain, and Tariq Kazi each scored one goal for Bangladesh throughout their 10 international matches that have been played so far under the direction of the Spaniard Cabrera. Bangladesh’s total goal output during these matches is just five goals.
Bangladesh’s forwards had a lot of difficulty in the most recent SAFF competition, which was played in the Maldives in 2021. Despite the fact that they created decent opportunities in the round-robin league format competition, they battled significantly. In the four games that Bangladesh played, they were only able to score a total of three goals, and those goals were scored by defenders Tapu Barman and Yeasin Arafat, as well as forward Suman Reza.
Nevertheless, Cabrera will be anticipating that Bangladesh’s forwards will perform at a high level in order to advance the team to the battle for the last four spots. However, it is a known truth that the forwards in his preliminary squad of 30 players have been unreliable throughout the already completed season. This is despite the fact that the foreign acquisitions played crucial roles in determining the outcomes of the majority of matches.
It’s interesting to note that 30 members of the preliminary team had a combined total of 52 goals scored by 17 players in three different competitions: the Bangladesh Premier League, the Federation Cup, and the Independence Cup.
Even though the total amount of goals may give the idea that the players have been in good form, 11 of the 17 goal scorers have been inconsistent despite the fact that the majority of them have had more than or equal to 20 opportunities to produce.
Eleta Kingsly, a forward for Abahani, led the scoring with nine goals, eight of which came from the Bangladesh Premier League and one from the Federation Cup. Rakib Hossain, a forward for Bashundhara Kings, participated in a lot of matches, although he was only able to score eight goals. Both Faisal Ahmed Fahim, who plays for Abahani, and Sazzad Hossain, who plays for Mohammedan SC and was picked at the very last second, have the potential to score seven and five goals, respectively.
In the upcoming regional football extravaganza, which will take place from June 21st to July 4th in Bengaluru, India, Cabrera is going to put his faith in the top scorers, but he will also take into account the players who are currently performing well and showing promise in order to put an end to the long-lasting and fruitless campaign.