New football power house of Bangladesh -Saif Sporting Club make their international debut with the home match of AFC Cup Play-Off preliminaries against TC Sports Club of Maldives at the Bangabandhu National Stadium at 3:00 pm today (Tuesday).
In the pre-match press conference held on Monday at the Bangladesh Football Federation House here, Ryan Northmore, the English coach of Saif Sporting spoke in the positive frame of mind hoping to capture all three points while his counterpart Mohammed Nizam also spoke in similar tone they want to leave the field with full glory.
Northmore, the English man spoke out that players are prepared for the challenge. “With the local players busy with the Independence Cup and the foreigners also in hard training, my team is ready for the challenge of TC Sports Club, we are playing in our own yard but we are not thinking of home advantage, rather we are ready to snatch a victory” said Northmore.
Nizam labeled Saif as a top team of Bangladesh. “They have taken a number of players from Chittagong Abahani and I have some idea about them as we played in the Sheikh Kamal International Football at Chittagong and won the title, it will be a motivating factor for us, we will take the field to win and sure with all the guns blazing” said Nizam.
Saif Sporting Club is the second team from Bangladesh to qualify for the AFC Cup after Federation Cup and Bangladesh Premier League champions Abahani.
Abahani are supposed to represent Bangladesh in the AFC Cup qualifiers directly Saif SC will take on TC Sports of Maldives in the first round of playoffs on January 23 at home before playing the away match against the same side on January 30.
In the other South Zone matches, Transport United of Bhutan will play their home match against JSW Bengaluru of India on January 23 at 6 pm at the Changlimithang Stadium in Thimphu while they will play their away match on January 30 at 8 pm at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore.
