Sports Desk:

Bangladesh finished second in Group H of AFC U-20 Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers following a 6-1 defeat against South Korea in Vientiane on Sunday, leaving their fate of a final round berth in the balance.

The women in red and green, who started the third and final game in pole position due to one more goal scored than Korea in the previous two matches, were undone by a much more organised and a tactically superior South Korea side at the New Lao National Stadium.

The defeat, which ended Bangladesh’s eight-match winning streak at this level, came as a bit of a reality check for Peter Butler’s charges, who found it hard playing their own game for the first time in a long time.

Although Bangladesh started the game strong and took an early lead through Krisna Rani Sarkar, the reality that Korea are a much higher-ranked team and one with much more technical superiority, was soon evident.

Bangladesh’s star striker Mosammat Sagorika missed a glorious opportunity to open the scoring in the second minute from a one-on-one situation but her strike partner, Trishna, got on the scoresheet with a tap-in following a rebound on a shot from Shanti Mardi on 15 minutes. That is as good as it got for Bangladesh as Korea soon started to establish their foothold, following the qualiser from a well-planned attack.

In fact some of the early goals from the Koreans came from long balls over the high-line three-player defence of Bangladesh, something Butler had to ditch soon for a 4-4-1-1 formation.

That change of formation and personnel, however, did not help Bangladesh much as the Koreans, ranked 21st in the world, completely tamped their domination against a helpless Bangladesh side, taking the score from 1-1 to 6-1.

The margin of defeat could have been bigger if not for some excellent saves from Bangladesh goalkeeper Swarna Rani Mondal. But even her resistance and that of the team wore down as the Koreans slotted in three goals in the last five 10 minutes of the game, leaving Afeida Khandaker and Co pensively keeping an eye on the other groups.