Dhaka, June 10: Bangladesh kick-off their Fifa World Cup 2018 Qualifiers with a crucial match against Kyrgyzstan at the Bangabandhu National Stadium at 5:00 pm on Thursday.

Till date Bangladesh has met Kyrgyzstan on two occasions and lost the both. In 2007 Bangladesh lost 2-0 in the Nehru Cup and in 2008 lost 3-0 in the AFC Challenge Cup at Sri Lanka. However this time the story is expected to be a different one as Kyrgyzstan has remained out of the international circuit for the last ten months and due to this reason they have dropped 26 positions in Fifa rankings. Currently they are 177 while Bangladesh is placed at the 167th slot of the Fifa rankings.

But Bangladesh coach Lodewijk de Kruif is not thinking about the ranking superiority. "It may feel good when you have a cup of coffee in your hand, but in the field playing better football is all that matters, at the end of the day winning is everything,losing the match and staying ahead in ranking is useless, Kyrgyzstan is a good team and they play in the superior circuit" said de Kruif.

Bangladesh will miss the service of winger Zahid Hossain who is sick while Riasat Khaton is injured, forward Wahed Ahmed was not considered for this match.

Alexander Kristinnin, the Russian coach of Kyrgyzstan said they are fully motivated to win the match. "We are not thinking of the Fifa rankings, the new format of the World Cup Qualifiers had provided the new opportunity to teams like us and we want to grab the opportunity, we had a seven day preparation camp in U.A.E before arriving here and we look forward towards a tough challenge" said the Kygyz coach.

Channel 9 will transmit the match live.