Lebanon and Bangladesh will clash against each other in their opening Group B match of the 2023 SAFF Championship at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium here on Thursday.
Aleksander Illicic’s Lebanon is the highest-ranked side in the SAFF Championships and is one of the two nations, along with Kuwait, which has been invited to play in the tournament, despite not being a SAFF nation.
Lebanon will start as favourites against Bangladesh not only because of its superior quality on paper but also because the team has been under constant match practice courtesy of its participation in the recently concluded Intercontinental Cup in Bhubaneshwar, where it lost 2-0 to India in the final.
That being said, Illicic will know better than to be complacent. In the Intercontinental Cup, Lebanon struggled against the 183rd-ranked Mongolia and played out a 0-0 draw. Bangladesh will look to take positives from that and churn out a positive result itself.
“We have come directly from the other tournament [Intercontinental Cup] that happened here in India. We have played a lot of games in a short span of time. Now, our job is to do our best and continue working like we did. It is our first time in this tournament, but our main job is to get better as a team, and we will be using his tournament for that,” said Illicic in the pre-tournament press conference.
Going by just rankings, it is easy to negate the 192nd-ranked Bangladesh, but a bit of deep diving will show that it has a history of being resistant to higher-ranked teams and has experienced players in captain Jamal Bhuyan, Sohel Rana, Eleta Kingsley, and Hemanta Biswas. In the 2021 SAFF Championships itself, it held India to a 1-1 draw in a group-stage game despite playing with a man down for the majority of the second.
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Bangladesh comes into the tournament after a 1-0 win against Cambodia.
“We need to start with a positive mentality. Our players are ready, and there is a lot of motivation and excitement,” said Bangladesh head coach Javier Fernández Cabrera.
Talking about whether Lebanon has an advantage against them due to its long stay in India and more game time, “I think it’s time we focus on ourselves. Obviously, Lebanon has got a lot of game time, and it is going to be a tough game for us, but we will be prepared,” Cabrera added.
The Lebanon vs Bangladesh match will kick off at 3:30 PM IST on June 22.
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