Sports Reporter:
Bangladesh national football team will play a FIFA International Friendly match with Cambodian na-tional team in Phnom Penh on Thursday as a part of their preparation for the eight-nation SAFF cham-pionship’ 2023 in India.
The lone FIFA Tier-1 International Friendly match between two teams will kick off at 6 pm (Bangladesh time) at the Phnom Penh Olympics Stadium.
Cambodian Television (BTV) will telecast the match live.
All the 30,000 tickets of the Thursday’s match have already been sold out, said a BFF media release on Wednesday.
In their last meeting in the FIFA Friendly, Bangladesh beat Cambodia by 1-0 goal in Phnom Penh in September 22 last year.
Ahead of the match, the morale of Bangladesh team is now high as the they made good practices in Phnom Penh beating the 3rd ranked Cambodian Premier league side Tiffy Army FC 1-0 in a preparato-ry match last Monday, featuring a first half goal by Abahani medio Mohammad Sohel Rana.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh passed a very busy day on Wednesday.
Bangladesh team is scheduled to make their one hour long final practice session at the match venue Wednesday evening from 7:15 pm to 8:15 pm.
After playing the Thursday’s match, touring Bangladesh team will fly for India on the next day (June 16) to compete in the 14th SAFF Championship ‘2023 scheduled for June 21 to July 5 at the Sree Kanteera-va Stadium in Bengaluru.
Earlier, Bangladesh have been drawn in Group B of the (SAFF) Championship 2023 with top seed and invitee Lebanon, two times champions Maldives and Bhutan while Group A team comprises eight-time champions India, invitee Kuwait, Nepal and Pakistan.
In the SAFF Championship, hosts India will play their arch-rivals Pakistan in one of the two opening day’s matches at 7:30 pm local time on June 21 while invitee Kuwait will face Nepal in the other inaugu-ral day’s match at 3:30 pm.
Bangladesh, the champions of 2003, will start their campaign taking on favorite and top seed Lebanon on the following day (June 22) at 3:30 pm at the same venue.
Bangladesh, who did not overcame the group stage barrier in the last five editions, will play Maldives on June 25 at 3:30 pm and meet Bhutan on June 28 at 7:30 pm in their remaining group matches
After the round-robin league matches, top two teams from each groups, will play in the semifinals on July 1 while the final billed for July 4
