MD ANWAR ULLAH, Dhaka: Head coach of national football team Jamie Day dreams of winning at least one of the two trophies up for grab during his next two-year tenure.
The British-born coach, who made a fresh deal with Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) with effect from 16 August 2020 to 15 August 2022, upon expiry of his two-year contract on 15 May, will have two major competitions of South Asian region – SAFF Championship and SA Games – apart from the FIFA and AFC qualifying competitions in his fresh endeavour.
After inking new terms, Jamie set his main target to win the SAFF Championship, which he could not win during his previous tenures although Gold in SA Games is also important.
SAFF is the most prestigious tournament of the region, which Bangladesh could taste only once in its more than 20-year history. Bangladesh, however, won the SA Games Gold on two occasions.
While talking to The Independent from London, the national football coach shared his targets in the ensuing two years of his job.
“Yes, we need to target at least one trophy over the course of next two years. We’ve progressed well during the first two tenures, but we’ve to have something now to show in the next two years,” Jamie said replying to a query.
According to him, “The dream would be to win SAFF Championship as it’s much tougher competition and the one I would love to win. As SAFF is a national teams’ competition, all national players compete here to win it, but SA Games should be for younger age group to get international experience.”
Hence, he said, “I think winning any trophy will be a challenge, but SAFF is the key one.”
The English coach added, “Although I give importance to SA Games, my view is that the SA Games should focus on giving the Under-19 players a fair chance to play international football.”
As the SA Games is deemed as the ‘Olympic’ of South Asian region and the gold medal of the SA Games is the most valuable medal to the fans, Jamie said, “Yes, I can understand this. But just from my experience as to how the competition was run and the facilities provided, I can say that SA Games would be better for the younger ones to get experiences. It is one of the issues I believe in Bangladesh that the people focus too much on winning when we should be focusing on developing young players for the future. But whatever and however I don’t ignore the SA Games.”
About Bangladesh’s prospect of crossing the qualifying round of the FIA and AFC, Jamie said, “The countries that qualify for the main stage have built solid foundations over many years and invested lots of time and money. But we unfortunately stayed far behind over the course of those years.”
“My message to the Bangladesh fans is that they should continue showing their fantastic support, which they did show in last two years. We’re working hard to achieve a trophy in next two years and they are a massive part of that mission by way of supporting the national team,” an optimistic Jamie said.
