Home ›› 22 Dec 2021 ›› Sport
Bangladesh will face India in the final of the SAFF U-19 Women’s Championship today at Shipahi Mostafa Kamal Stadium in Dhaka.
Bangladesh are the defending champion of this tournament, they won the inaugural edition at Bhutan in 2018 and now they will face a tough challenge from India to get hold of their crown.
The hosts had a low-key start in the tournament as they ended on a stalemate against Nepal in the opening match, but they picked up as the tournament progresses.
Bangladesh beat Bhutan by 6-0 in their next match, then beat India by 1-0 in the very important group-stage match and in the final group-stage match they won against Sri Lanka by 12-0.
Bangladesh is unbeaten in this tournament so far has scored a total of 19 goals while India lost only to Bangladesh, they scored eight goals and conceded just one.
The only goal India conceded was from a penalty kick against Bangladesh.
The head coach of the Bangladesh U-19 Women’s team, Golam Rabbani told the reporters that,
“We are playing against India in the final, we need to work on our finishing. We have played tough competitive matches against India and Nepal, we will be needing that confidence”, he said after winning against Sri Lanka by a massive margin.
Bangladesh U-19 women’s team player Maria Manda came to the press meet on Tuesday. She said,
“Our aim was to go match by match and develop our game, we won the matches by following that process. We were ahead of the other teams. Tomorrow (today) we have a match against India, we need to correct all our mistakes from the previous matches to do well against India. We will fight in the final and hopefully, we will come out as winners” she said.
India’s coach Alex Ambrose attended the press conference on Tuesday and said,
“Every final is tough, there is no easy one. It’s even tougher against the hosts because they receive all the support from the crowd. It makes a big difference”, he told the reporters.
The Indian coach also said that to him, the process is more important than the results,
“We Indian’s don’t think that we must win trophies at the age-level tournaments, our main objective is to maintain the right process so that young talents grow up in the right way. We want to develop young talents for bigger tournaments”, said the Indian team coach.
Sumati Kumari, a player from the Indian team is also eager to play in the title decider that takes place today at 6 PM,
“The team is playing in the final, feeling very good. We will do everything to win the final”, she said.
