Reigning champions Bangladesh are all set to begin their title defence of the SAFF Under-19 Women’s Championship today against Bhutan in the opening match of the four-team tournament at the Pokhara Rangasala Stadium in Pokhara, Nepal.
Since the inception of SAFF’s women’s youth level competition in 2018, Bangladesh have been crowned champions in five out of six editions and the girls in red and green will begin the seventh edition as the pre-tournament favourites as well.
The girls only had a days’ preparation in Pokhara before facing Bhutan, following their involvement in Bangladesh Women’s Football League.
Despite the lack of preparation, the charges of English coach Peter Butler are considered favourites in today’s match, having never lost to Bhutan in their previous five meetings in the youth championships, and netting four goals or more in all of those matches.
Butler viewed the championship as a development tournament and prioritised identifying players for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and AFC Women’s Under-20 Championship over bringing home the trophy.
“I haven’t come here to win this trophy. It’s not my main priority. My main priority is to identify and assess the young girls who have done extremely well, getting to their first Asian Cup Under-20,” said Butler at a pre-tournament briefing in Pokhara.
The coach said his main objective was, “to assess them, identify the ones which actually could play a part in that tournament [AFC U-20 Championship] further down the track.”
Captain Arpita Biswas is optimistic of making it to the final and hopes to progress match by match.
“Though we could not get time to get prepared for the championship, our preparation is more or less good because we have been involved with the Women’s Football League. Our plus point is that we have a good understanding among ourselves and our target is to win every match and reach the final,” said Arpita.
India and Nepal are the other two competing teams. All four sides will face each other once and the top two teams will play the final on February 7.
