Bangladesh team leave for SAFF

Bangladesh national football team left for Maldives on Tuesday to participate in the upcoming SAFF Championship.

Bangladesh team’s flight for Maldives was at 3:50 PM on Tuesday.

Bangladesh announced their 23-man squad for the SAFF Championship on Monday, a day before leaving for the tournament. The most notable absentee was Eleta Kingsley, the Nigeria-born forward who had received his Bangladesh passport earlier this year.

Bangladesh Football Federation did not receive clearance from FIFA and AFC to field the Basundhara Kings striker and thus had to leave him out.

Eleta was one of the four players dropped from the 27-man preliminary squad. The others were midfielder Manik Molla, defenders Atikuzzaman and Mehedi Hasan Mithu.

Bangladesh will play under head coach Oscar Bruzon in the upcoming SAFF Championship, appointed just for the upcoming tournament.

Before leaving for Maldives, Bangladesh skipper Jamal Bhuyan told the media that they were eyeing winning the tournament.

“We have been working hard in the last few practice sessions. We want to do our best and want to show that we can do something in the tournament. Hopefully, we will do something in the tournament. Of course, our goal is to become champions, but we have to take one match in time, and then we can hopefully reach the final. We are confident to have some success in the tournament,” the Bangladesh skipper said.

New coach Bruzon said he could not promise to win the trophy, but the players have already started performing differently.

“I can’t promise the result or the trophy. But I can promise the boys have already started performing in a different way and implementing new ideas. We want Bangladesh football to progress to a greater height. For that, we need to show that we can beat all teams in South Asia. So, winning the trophy is one thing, but we urge you to have some patience because we are very involved with the process, and the confidence of everybody is very high,” the Spaniard said.

Bangladesh’s SAFF campaign kicks off on the first day with their match against Sri Lanka on October 1.

Bangladesh’s recent history in SAFF is not very promising as it has been 18 years since they won the trophy in 2003. The last time they managed to reach the final was in the next edition in 2005.

Since the 2009 SAFF Championship at home, Bangladesh have failed to even reach the semi-finals and have won only three out of their last 12 matches in the tournament.