In January, Javier Cabrera of Spain took over as the head coach of the Bangladesh national football team. National football has played only two matches under this new coach in four months. Jamal Bhuiyan lost 2-0 to Maldives in the first match in Male on March 24 and drew 0-0 against Mongolia in the second match in Sylhet on March 29.
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It is difficult to evaluate a coach with just two matches. There is no room for criticism about the result of the two matches against the team which is ahead in the FIFA rankings.
However, these four months of activities have made the new coach a little different from the coaches who have served in the past. One of which is that despite a long gap in the national team’s game, the Cabaret never went on vacation. While sitting in Dhaka, he is carrying out activities to increase the strength of the national team.
English coach Jamie Day, who has been working for more than three years in a row, would go on vacation whenever there was a gap in the national team assignment. According to the agreement with BFF, the new coach gets 10 days off a year, but he did not spend a single day off in this gap.
What did the cabaret do at this time? Before the start of preparations for the matches against Maldives and Mongolia in March, he visited clubs in the Bangladesh Premier League and talked to the players and coaches. He has an idea about club footballers. Everyone knows the past. What is the basis of a player, they have noted. In this way the new coach has created a database of players. No previous foreign coach has taken this initiative.
This is the first time a foreign coach has come to the BFF building regularly and is working with assistants. Cabrera’s assistant goalkeeping coach Biplob Bhattacharya said: The National Teams Committee has given the coach the opportunity to work independently. The coach is working with us every day and evaluating the performance of the players of the league. So now there is no opportunity to spend lazy time because there is no game.