Bangladesh team irked with training facilities provided in Shillong

Bangladesh team's assistant coach Hasan Al Mamun and defender Saad Uddin have expressed their dismay over the lack of facilities provided to the team in Shillong for their AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers fixture against India.

The men in red and green, who reached Shillong on Thursday, had to train at an ill-prepared grass surface at the North-Eastern Hill University Ground on Friday, much to the chagrin of the players and the coaching staff.

While the team had hoped for a better surface on Saturday, they were provided an astroturf instead.

FIFA rule mandates teams to be allowed to train at the match venue at least on the day before the match. With the match scheduled for Tuesday at the Jawaharlal Nehru Sports Complex Ground, which features a grass surface, the Indian football authority is within its rights to not allow the Bangladesh team to train at the match venue, but the practice venues could have been much better, opined assistant coach Hasan Al Mamun.

Speaking to reporters during training, Mamun said: "Astroturf has this risk associated with injuries. But we had told our team that we could face these issues. So we were prepared for this mentally. But obviously there will be some deficiency in training, and we know this is their strategy.

We were asked to train on the same pitch that we trained on on Friday, but we said we won't train there. At the end of the day, we are focused on our football," the former national team player added.

Defender Saad Uddin claimed that the schedule of training is not being maintained either by the local authorities.

"This is a bit disturbing. We were supposed to train at 5:30pm, but after the team meeting, the coach said that our training has been deferred to 7:30pm.

"We know it would have been better if we could train on a grass pitch," Saad said. "When we came to India (Kolkata) for a World Cup qualifier match in 2019, we had afforded much better facilities. We didn't face any such issues at that time. But we were mentally prepared for this and our focus is on our training and we are here to win."