‘Approach and attitude’: Booters’ bright takeaways

Bangladesh's qualifying campaign of the FIFA World Cup 2026 left little room for an optimistic postmortem, but forward Rakib Hossain reckons that the men in red and green have shown improvement in two aspects: a never-say-die "attitude" and "approach" in playing a comparative attacking brand of football than before.

The charges of Javier Cabrera returned home from Qatar yesterday after drawing curtains in Tuesday's 4-0 loss to Lebanon, leaving them with a solitary point from six Group I encounters in the second round.

Although an encouraging show in 2023 SAFF Championship in Bengaluru had expectations escalated, Bangladesh eventually conceding a whopping 20 goals quantified a lacklustre campaign.

Moreover, they displayed a polarising performance in their home and away fixtures -- significantly worse in the latter since they only allowed four goals in home fixtures -- against vastly superior opponents in Australia, Palestine and Lebanon.

For Rakib -- who played a key role behind Bangladesh's progress by striking the first of two goals against Maldives in the qualifiers' first round -- "the change of team attitude has been the biggest achievement" despite unfavourable outcomes.

"Our target was to finish third in four-team group, but silly mistakes made us suffer big-margin defeats or deprived us of a victory.

"However, we have improved a lot in approach and attitude because we came out of our defensive shell to play possession and attacking football and never gave up till the last minute," Rakib said.

Rakib Hossain looks to head the ball during training on June 8, 2024. Photo: BFF

The 25-year-old forward, who called his own performance "unsatisfactory", believes that Bangladesh will be able to rectify mistakes if they get to play much stronger oppositions on a regular basis, especially abroad where the playing field offers a faster pace than familiar conditions at home.

Rakib, however, remains hopeful that "something good is waiting" for his side in upcoming SAFF Championship and Asian Cup Qualifiers.