Bangladesh will face Singapore in the Asian Cup qualifiers on June 10. Before that, they will play a FIFA friendly match against Bhutan today (Wednesday). Bangladesh coach Javier Cabrera has selected a squad of six expatriate footballers for these two matches. Among them, Canadian expatriate footballer Samit Som is the last to set foot in Dhaka.
The midfielder, who plays for the Canadian national football team, received approval from the FIFA Player Status Committee to wear the Bangladesh jersey on May 6. Since then, he has been waiting to make his debut for the Bangladesh national team. Samit arrived in Dhaka early this morning to end that wait. He is likely to be rested for the Bhutan match today due to travel fatigue.
Samit Som, who stepped foot at Shahjalal International Airport, said, “I am very excited. I am looking forward to meeting my teammates. We have talked with the coach about how we want to play, what role we will play. Right now, I am looking forward to meeting everyone in the team, being with the team. I know our team is good, I hope something good will happen.”
Javier Cabrera announced the team with 6 expatriate footballers. The squad includes Hamza Chowdhury (England), Jamal Bhuiyan (Denmark), Kazem Shah (Canada), Fahmidul Islam (Italy), Tariq Kazi (Finland) and Samit Som (Canada). Jamal, Tariq and Kazem have already arrived. Hamza made his debut last month in the India match. And Fahmidul and Samit have joined the team.
Bangladesh captain Jamal expressed his expectations yesterday for the arrival of expatriate footballers, “When Tariq (an expatriate from Finland) came after me, I thought no more expatriates would join. Now I see it is slowly increasing. I think this is good for the country’s football. Look, the biggest example of these expatriate footballers is France. Most of their players are from abroad. But the country has also won the World Cup title.”
