Sports reporter
From Jessore
The chapter of Bangabandhu Gold Cup-2016 in Jessore will closing with the match between Maldives Under-23 Football Team and Cambodia National Football Team today (Monday) at 2:45 pm (BST) at the Shams-Ul-Huda Stadium in Jessore.Channel 9 and BTV will telecast the match live while Bangladesh Betar will broadcast live-commentary from the venue.
Maldives boys are ranked 160th while Cambodian, the Angkor Warriors, are the 180th placer on the FIFA world ranking. That way the country of Coral Stone are better than the country of Angkor Wat.
So far, the Maldives boys won two of the three matches against the Cambodians and saw a draw in the other one. Cambodians had not found any win against the rivals.
Maldives played their last international match against host India in the semi-final of the SAFF Championship-2015 and were defeated by 3-2 margin.
In the pre-match briefing on Sunday, Maldives coach Ricki Herbert (New Zealand) said, "It is a youth based team and most of the players are new. You may consider it a youth team."
"We haven't got enough time before the tournament but hope to gather experience in here for the upcoming SA Games."
Coach Ricki, who played in the FIFA World Cup for New Zealand in 1982, said that his team got five players who had experience of playing the recently finished SAFF Championship-2015.
"We are pitted in a tough group in the Bangabandhu Gold Cup. But we will try our best to get into the last-four of the tournament," said the coach.
Coach is the main inspiration for the Maldives team. Ricki was the coach of New Zealand in the FIFA World Cup-2010 and Maldives boys were hopeful of a good result under this coach.
However, Maldives boys didn't practice on Sunday due to tiredness after the journey to Jessore.
On the other hand, Cambodian coach Lee Tae-Hoon (South Korea) did not attend the pre-match briefing as he was busy with the team in the practice session.
Instead of coach, Cambodian team manager Chhaing Pisedth was in the briefing session.
He said, "We got the invitation to play the tournament quite late. Still we are happy to play the event. We want to do well step by step."
The coach said that around 70 per cent player of his team were experienced of playing in FIFA World Cup Qualifier. They had played their last international match against Japan in November 17 in the Qualifier round and were defeated in that match by 2-0 margin.
Today's match:
Maldives Under-23 vs. Cambodia National Team at 2:45pm at the Shams-Ul-Huda Stadium in Jessore.