The distance between Sylhet and Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, may only be Bhutan and China, but in terms of weather, these are two extreme cities. While the average temperature in the Mongolian capital currently drops down to even 20 degrees centigrade at night, it usually hovers around 20 to 30 degrees in Sylhet at this time of the year.

Hence the journey the Mongolian football team have made for their FIFA friendly against Bangladesh is not mere 2000 miles, it’s also traveling from one extreme to the other. And the visitors are not feeling quite at home here, according to their Japanese coach Ichiro Otsuka.

“I came (into the job) only two months ago. The condition of the players is not so good because they didn’t train for six months,” the Japanese coach said.

It has been so cold in the landlocked country that football has been put on hold since the end of the Mongolian Premier League at the start of October. Then the single-match Mongolian Super Cup took place and that’s it.

The team only trained, albeit with interruption, since the start of March for the Bangladesh game and the one against Laos past week, which they lost 1-0.

While the 57-year-old claimed he doesn’t know much about Bangladesh football, he could definitely gather some ideas from his compatriot Tetsuaki Misawa, who scored the highest 17 goals in the Mongolian league last season before switching to Muktijoddha Sangsad in the Bangladesh Premier League.

source: (the daily star)