Lopez happy

Bangladesh coach Fabio Lopez congratulated his players for a brave performance against the Socceroos and also thanked the home crowd for turning up in great numbers yesterday.

“I want to thank the fans for their relentless support for the team and I want to congratulate the players, who were really fantastic tonight [Tuesday],” said a smiling Lopez at the post-match briefing after his side’s  4-0 defeat against Australia.

Bangladesh conceded all four goals in the first half, thanks to a hattrick from Tim Cahill but the home side did not allow the Socceroos to widen the margin in the second half.

“If we did not make mistakes three times, we would not have lost the match 4-0. We did not concede any goal in the second half because our preparation was good,” said Lopez, who felt this was a much better performance than the 5-0 defeat against Tajikistan last week and even better than the one Bangladesh put up against Australia in Perth.

“The condition, the synthetic turf and rain were really tough for us in Tajikistan but today [Tuesday], the players wanted to do something and they played well and made less number of mistakes.

“The boys even completed seven-eight-nine passes successfully and it seemed that we were playing against a same level of opposition. I watched the Perth match and Bangladesh hardly completed any pass successfully,” said the 42-year-old coach, who will take the side to China today for an eight-team international tournament, scheduled for November 20 to 30.