Nilphamari: Bangladesh national football team will play a FIFA International Friendly with Sri Lankan national side her on Wednesday ahead of the seven-nation SAFF Suzuki Cup Football’2018 beginning on September 4 at the Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka.

The match will begin at 4 pm at 20,000-capacity Sheikh Kamal Stadium in Nilphamari.

Bangladesh Television will telecast the match live while Bangladesh Betar will broadcast the running commentary of the match.   

In a pre-match press conference at a hotel in Rangpur on Tuesday, the officials and captains of both the teams expressed their optimism to win the match playing their best.

Sri Lanka Coach Nizam Pakir Aly, who was a familiar footballer of Dhaka League, said, ‘I considered Bangladesh as my 2nd home, but as Sri Lanka coach, we want to give our best to win against Bangladesh although they are a very good side.’

‘Our team prepared in South Korea and Japan for the last few months. We played to a 1-1 draw against Lithuania in a friendly match recently,’ he added.

Sri Lankan Captain Subash Madhusan said, ‘We’re going to play our first match outside Dhaka. Out team studded with young and experienced players will try to play their best.’

Manager of Bangladesh team Satyajit Das Rupu said, ‘Our booters played a good number of matches in the last few months in the Asian Games, Korea, Qatar and Laos. For this reason, we’ve decided to rest seven players in Wednesday’s match to avoid injury ahead of the SAFF Champs.’

‘Our target is to be the champions in the SAFF Suzuki Cup and we want to go ahead with this goal,’ he added.

Bangladesh Coach Jamie Day said, ‘Our team played nice football in the Asian Games, having some good results in aboard. Now we’re preparing our team for the SAFF title and we’re very exciting to do good results against Sri Lanka.’

‘In the SAFF Football, our first target is to win the group matches and then we are looking for the final. Our players are now fully physically fit to give their best efforts to clinch the SAFF title,’ he further added.

The Sri Lanka team reached Dhaka on Sunday night from Indonesia and landed at the Saidpur Airport in Nilphamari on Monday noon en-route to Rangpur city where the team are staying.

But, hosts Bangladesh team reached Saidpur Airport on Tuesday noon en-route to Rangpur to play the friendly match in Nilphamari.

Bangladesh team made their practices at the Rangpur Stadium on Tuesday afternoon while the Islanders Sri Lanka made their practices at the Sheikh Kamal Stadium in Nilphamari.

Bangladesh, which were placed in Group A of the SAFF Suzuki Cup with Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan, will play Bhutan in the 2nd match on the opening day (Sept 4) at 7 pm while Pakistan will play Nepal in the opening match at 4 pm.

India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives have been put in Group B of the meet.