DHAKA, March 23, 2019 (BSS)- The Bangladesh U-23 team geared up to take on strong Palestine in their second group B match as team’s head coach Jamie Day in an interview said he is ready to take up the challenge, according to a message received here from BFF today.
Head Coach Jamie Day: 1.What are your expectations from the game?
Ans- Well, as I’ve said before, Palestine and Bahrain are best teams in the group. So, the match against Palestine will be another tough one. But we’re up for the challenge. We’ll give it our best to hopefully get something out of the game.
2. What is Bangladesh’s plan for the Palestine match given our narrow loss and their commanding victory in respective first matches?
Ans- We need to get something from the match after losing yesterday. It’s going to be similar to what we’ve done before. We want to obviously start the game well. We want to be compact to give ourselves a chance of getting something out of the match. And hopefully we can capitalize on the mistakes they make.
3. Will Bangladesh again go in with a 5-man back-line?
Ans- Well, it’s something we will decide after a discussion tonight and decide which will be the best formation to play tomorrow against Palestine.
Goalkeeping Coach Dean May:
1. What are your thoughts on the Bangladesh GK’s performance?
Ans- Well, last night’s performance of Zico was good. He kept the team in the game with some of his saves. He has been trying to implement some of the match related training in the game.
2. What are the issues of the Bangladesh goalkeepers that you are currently working on?
Ans- The biggest issue with all these keepers is a lack of understanding of match related training. So, we’ve been working on making training as close to the match situation as possible and encourage them to make the decisions unlike before where there was too much coaching on how they should do things and why.
Physiotherapist Simon Maltby:
1. What are your thoughts so far on the Bangladesh players regarding fitness.
Ans- Well, there’s some difference between some players and the others. Some players are used to going into the gym and doing strength work whereas some of them are not. So, we’ll have to get used to that even though it’s a bit difficult while going into tournament. But their attitude is first class, very good.
2. What areas do you think we can improve on?
Ans- Strength and conditioning is first and foremost really. We need to educate the players on how to recover too so that they know how to maintain their fitness.
Notably, Bangladesh did not have any training on Saturday apart from a gym and pool session at 11:00am local time. There will be class with all the players for video analysis and match related discussion for tomorrow’s game.