Bangladesh football team will start their campaign in the SAFF U-20 Championship 2022 against Sri Lanka today at Indian city of Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar at 7:00pm (BST).
The Maldives will take on Nepal in the opening match of the competition earlier this day at the same venue at 4:00pm.
“We are looking forward to the game and we have lots of excitement for the first match. Preparations have been very good, we started preparations from Bangladesh and continued it here,” said Paul Smalley Thomas, U-20 head coach and Technical Director of Bangladesh team.
“Players are healthy, no injury issues in the team. It was not so difficult to get prepared because most of the players are from BCL and BPL. We got all the facilities during the training sessions,” he added.
Bangladesh captain cum defender Tanvir Hossain said that they are determined to start their campaign with a win over Sri Lanka.
“Everybody is confident and wanted to start the campaign with a win over Sri Lanka. The team are fully prepared and ready to give their best tomorrow,” Tanvir said.
Bangladesh, who have been participating in the age-level competition for four editions, became runners-up two times in 2017 and 2019. They had narrowly missed the title on both editions.
Bangladesh failed to grab the title due to head-to-head rules with Nepal in 2017 while they conceded a 1-2 goal defeat to India in the final in 2019.
This year, five teams including Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and India are taking part in the round-robin meet.
Bangladesh will play their other matches against India on July 27, the Maldives on July 29 and Nepal on August 2. The top two teams will play in the final on August 5.
