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Bangladesh National Football Team reached Cambodia on Saturday ahead of their FIFA tier-1 friendly match. The match will be held in Cambodia on June 15.
The Red and Greens left Dhaka via a TG-322 flight at 1:35 PM on Saturday. They reached their hotel in Cambodia at 9 PM Bangladesh time.
They will train in Cambodia from today.
This match, against 176-ranked Cambodia, will serve as Bangladesh’s practice match ahead of their SAFF Championship 2023 campaign in India.
Ahead of the tour, Bangladesh announced their 23-man squad for the friendly match and the SAFF Championship on Friday, where Eleta Kingsley, Sazzad Hossain, Rimon Hossain, and Tutul Hossain Badsha were excluded. The latter duo were excluded due to injury.
Ahead of the SAFF Championship, Bangladesh skipper Jamal Bhuyan said that his goal was to win the title, a feat which Bangladesh last achieved two decades earlier.
“We want good results. The ultimate goal is to win the SAFF trophy. We can do this. We can reach the final but first, we want to make it to the semi-finals. We have players who can win us the matches,” he said in a press conference on Friday.
Bangladesh are one of the lowest-ranked sides in the upcoming SAFF tournament, and Jamal believes this will help them in the long run.
“We are underdogs in the tournament. We are not favourites. This is very positive for us. The other teams may think we are not strong. But we have the belief that we are a good team,” he said.
Bangladesh failed to qualify for the knockout stage last time and would have to complete a monumental task to do so this time as they are in Group B with Lebanon, who are the highest-ranked side in the tournament, alongside the Maldives and Bhutan.
“Obviously, Lebanon are quite a strong team in terms of ranking and physical condition, but we believe in our capacity to compete against them. If we want to go to the semifinals, we must win games. It is absolutely difficult because the Maldives are a higher-ranked side and may be more favoured than us, but we are convinced we can beat them,” Bangladesh head coach Javier Cabrera said about their group-stage opponents.
Despite missing key players such as Tutul and Rimon, Cabrera was confident of the team doing well in South Asia’s showcase football event.
“Some important players like Rimon and Badsha are not in the squad due to injuries so we called up other players who have had enough playing time and have been with us before like Isa Faisal. We have full confidence in the performance of these players and are convinced we can perform well and will perform well,’ the Spaniard said on Friday.
Bangladesh will start their SAFF campaign against Lebanon on June 22, followed by their clash against the Maldives on June 25, and then they will play their final group stage game against Bhutan on June 28.
