Home ›› 20 Jan 2022 ›› Sport
Javier Cabrera, the newly-appointed Bangladesh national football team head coach, said on Wednesday that he was extremely motivated for the challenge.
The Spanish coach was presented officially as the head coach of the red-and-greens at the Bangladesh Football Federation office in Dhaka on Wednesday, where he attended a press conference.
Cabrera, who has worked for FC Sporting Goa in India and FC Barcelona’s academy in USA, believes he is ready for the job, despite not having any prior international management experience.
“I’m extremely motivated with the challenge, and I’m absolutely convinced that I’m ready for the challenge. I followed SAFF, I know Bangladeshi clubs like Abahani, Bashundhara kings, I’m not new to this, that experience having worked in India gave me some advantage to understand the football culture in Bangladesh,” he said to the media.
Bangladesh had three different coaches in 2021. After Jamie Day was sacked, Bashundhara Kings head coach Oscar Bruzon took charge for the SAFF Championship, before Abahani Ltd head coach Mario Lemos took over the team for the four-nation tournament in Sri Lanka.
But neither could bring Bangladesh success as they conceded last-minute penalties in both tournaments to get knocked out off the group stages.
Cabrera believes Bangladesh played well in those tournaments but lacked fortune. He said, “I saw the SAFF, and then in Sri Lanka. I was quite impressed with how structured and organised the team was and how competitive they were. They lacked some fortune at the end, but their performances in this tournament have been quite remarkable.”
The Spaniard added that he wanted to create an identity of the Bangladesh national team and looks forward to building a competitive team.
“My approach is to be competitive, to develop players that can understand what the game demands in each moment. That doesn’t mean having control of the ball every time. It can be by ball possession, it can be by understanding where the advantage is.
“Other times we should have the initiative without having the ball, to pressing high to recover the ball. I don’t think we need to reduce to one specific game model, but give the tools to the players to understand what the game demands at each moment,” he said.
Cabrera also has a plan in mind to become successful in Bangladesh.
“What I need to be successful is to create a high-performance structure, to create an identity. And to be able to communicate and transmit to the players what we want to achieve. The players need to be clear on what we want from them,” the new Bangladesh head coach said.
