The Bangladesh U16 girls have again shown that they can be competitive and produce excellent performances. They proved their quality and potential playing in the chilly weather in Osaka at one of JFA's prestigious national facilities.

The U16 girls faced comparatively better opponents in Japanese Football Association (JFA) full time academies and Japanese professional clubs.

These structures and pathways have been created by the JFA over many years to develop international players for their national women’s teams.

The first indication, that the girls were not going to be phased, came when Bangladesh beat hosts Sakai Academy, 2-1 after Sakai had beaten the Thai U16 with an embarrassing 10-0 score line.

The tournament, or festival as it was called, wasn't really structured with an emphasis on ascertaining the position of each participating teams. Every team played six games over two exciting football days.

Bangladesh managed to beat substantially stronger teams boasting players from Japan’s National young age group teams. Of the seven matches they played, including the friendly with Sakai Academy, the Bengal Girls won 4, lost 1 and drew 2.

The whole experience was invaluable to the players and staff, lots of lessons were learnt and the girls return to Bangladesh to resume their training and development at the BFF residential programme.

The entire team was quite upbeat after their return to warmer climes. The girls said it had been a great experience for them. They said this visit actually opened their eyes to a lot of things.

Sirat Jahan Shopna, the highest scorer for Bangladesh, said the team played against strong teams that were skilled who have faster movement and accurate passing “We are now more confident than before and hope, to better in September.”

Krishnarani Sarkar, the captain also agreed it was a new experience for everyone. “It is a different culture, different food and different language. So it was really interesting and fun experience for us.”

She said the busy schedule, six matches in two days was also a new experience and beneficial for the team as a whole.

The coaches said they were satisfied with the fine progress and were keen to back to the field and implement what they had learnt. Reiterating himself, head coach Golam Rabbani Choton said it was all in preparation for AFC finals later this year.

Bangladesh had sent an 18-member squad for the tournament as part of increases exposure for our teams under phase three of football development.