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Youngsters give football hope

Sports Reporter
Country's downwardspiralling football saw a ray of hope in 2018 by entering into she second round of the Asian Carnes for the first time in history as well as through spirited performances in the SAFF Championship and Bangabandhu Cold Cup, and it was made possible due to the emergence of some young players who are expected to carry the torch of hope this year too.
The lowest point of the downward-spiral had come in October, 2016 when the national team lost to Bhutan in prequalifiers for Russia World Cup before young guns like Mahabubur Rahman Sufil, Tutul Hossain Badsha, Biswanath Cosh, Biplu Ahmed, Saad Uddin and a couple of others burst into the scene to start the revival.
The hooters are set to be involved in three international assignments this year - AFC U-23 Championship Qualifiers, South Asian Games and 2022 World Cup Qualifiers - and the young players are seemingly optimistic about taking their 2018 performance into 2019.
"The mentality of every footballer at the moment is they want to lift the country's football in 2019 because everyone is still maintaining discipline and doing their club training properly. Everyone wants to take country's football to a good position by transforming the performance of 2018 to 2019," promising centre-back Tutul Hossain Badsha said yesterday.
"If we look back, our football at international level took a good shape in the latter part of 2018. The reason is there was discipline and unity among the players while some young players such as Biplu, Sufil, Biswanath and others came to the main fold. We all strictly followed discipline and toiled hard to adapt to the formation of the coach,” said the 20-year-old defender.
Even though Bangladesh Olympic team created a small piece of history by advancing to the second round of the Asian Games, the senior side were eliminated from the group stages of the SAFF Championship for the fourth consecutive time despite winning the first two matches. Badsha has his own explanation regarding the success and the failure.
"The reason behind the good results of
the under-23 team in Asian Games was that we had been together for a long period and played some warm-up matches which helped us have a good understanding. However, before the SAFF Championship, the senior team did not get such practice matches," said Badsha, who made his debut for the senior side against Laos in a friendly in March, 2018.
The defender, who captained the under-23 team in the 2017 AFC U-23 Championship Qualifiers in Palestine, said that more young players are in the pipeline and some of them put up good performances in the Federation Cup and Independence Cup, scoring a few spectacular goals which was not seen in domestic competitions in the last four or five years.
Coach Jamie Day is planning to blood more youngsters in the age-group team by pinning hopes on the young guns who have already proved themselves in the last three international tournaments.
"I think most of the players who were involved in the Asian games will stay but we will add new players to the squad," Day told Daily Star in an email reply from England.
The Englishman, whose contract is likely to be extended in May, has set a target of taking Bangladesh's FIFA ranking to 180 by this year.
"It's going to be difficult for a nation like Bangladesh in the World Cup Qualifiers because of the opposition we will play against, but we will work hard and try out best to get as far as possible. The aim is to try to get into the 180 of the rankings this year," said the 3 8-year-old coach.