Bangladesh reach SAFF U-15 semifinal eliminating Maldives 9-0

Bangladesh reached the semifinal of the six-nation SAFF U-15 Championship with one match to spare eliminating the Maldives by huge 9-0 goals in their first appearance at ANFA Complex in Lalitpur of Nepal on Saturday.

With the day’s humiliation, the Maldives eliminated from the meet with two successive defeats including 0-4 goals against hosts Nepal last Thursday.

With the day’s well merited victory, Bangladesh team dominated Group A table securing full three points from the first match with better goal margin of 9-0.

Nepal, which also assured the semifinal berth from the group, followed Bangladesh neck and neck also by securing full three points from one match, but went down due to poor goal margin of 4-0.

Touring Bangladesh will play Nepal on Monday (Oct 29) to decide the Group A champions.

Both the semifinals will be held on November 1 while the final match will commence on November 3 at 3:30 pm at the same venue.

In the day’s first match against the Maldives, Nihad Jaman made a hat-trict scoring four goals in the 11th, 19th, 23rd and 48th minutes, Rasel Ahmed struck twice in the 47th and 66th minutes, Ashiqur Rahman netted two in the 80th and 95th minutes while Mehedi Hassan netted the remaining goal in the 44th minute.

A good member of Bangladeshis thronged at the stadium to cheer for their team.

In the day’s other match, Pakistan topped the Group B list with all-win record collecting full six points from two matches outplaying Bhutan by 4-0 goals after beating their arch-rival India by 2-1 goals in the opening match on Thursday morning.

Earlier on Tuesday, a 32-member Bangladesh U-15 Football team reached Nepal to participate in the SAFF U-15 Championship where all the South Asian teams, except Sri Lanka are taking part.

Source: unb