Booters not confident of repeating 2018 feat

Despite making it to the Round of 16 of the Asian Games for the first time in 2018, Bangladesh team are seemingly not enough confident to repeat the feat in the football event of the Hangzhou Asian Games. The football event will kick off on September 19.

Bangladesh pipped Qatar and Thailand to get out of the group stage in 2018 before being beaten 4-1 by North Korea in the knock-out match.

This time Bangladesh have been pitted against hosts China, India and Myanmar with top two teams slated to advance to the Round of 16.

"I was a member of the 2018 squad, where most of the players had national team experience. This time there are many inexperienced players, who have played in age-group matches but did not get play at top level competitions. However, they are eager to prove themselves to get into the senior team, so we are looking forward to playing match by match and hope to get good results," captain Rahmat Mia said at a press conference ahead of their scheduled departure in the early hours of Saturday.

Head coach Jaiver Cabrera echoed the same sentiment and said they would take each match at a time.

"We don't want to set a target before the start of the Games but we have prepared well, we have a lot of confidence in this group. The players have been together for a long time and our main objective is to make sure we play well against Myanmar in the first match. If we get points from the first match, we will have a good opportunity to advance to the next round," said Cabrera.