The Bangladesh women's football team often hit headlines when it comes to age-group international tournaments, but the success of the senior women's side has not been anywhere near as noteworthy. With that reality in mind, the senior women's side have set their sights on confirming a semifinal berth in the 6th SAFF Women's Championship, which will start from September 6 in Kathmandu.

Women's age-group teams may have won regional tournaments and emerged as group champions in the age-group AFC Cup on a few occasions, but the senior side have reached the final of the SAFF Women's Championship just once in five editions. Instead, it is five-time champions India and four-time runners-up Nepal that have dominated with more experienced sides.

During the last edition of the SAFF Women's Championship in 2019, BFF technical director Paul Smalley remarked that it appeared to be 'girls vs women' when Bangladesh took the field against other teams. Bangladesh started that campaign by defeating Bhutan 2-0 but lost to Nepal in their second group game before falling 4-0 to India in the semifinal.

Three years later, the same group of girls that have been together for over seven years, are set to compete against India, Maldives and Pakistan in their group.

When asked what had been done during the passing of those years, head coach Golam Rabbabi Choton said: "There is still a difference in terms of age. Players like Maria, Monica and many others in our senior side were playing U-18 tournament not too long ago. But I think they gathered a lot international experience, they have grown older and improved physically. Defeating Malaysia, who were ahead of us in the FIFA Rankings and in terms of physique, in a friendly was evidence of that improvement."

Bangladesh have never beaten India or Nepal in the SAFF Women's Championship, having only held them to stalemates, but the women will most likely need to overcome one of those hurdles in order to make it to the final for the first time since their maiden final appearance in 2016.

"We trained hard for the past six weeks. During training, we worked on rectifying the mistakes made against Malaysia in the two friendly matches in June. They are ready for the tournament," said Choton, who will have the freedom to guide the team single-handedly due to BFF technical director Smalley accompanying the Bangladesh U-17 team in the U-17 SAFF Championship in Sri Lanka.

The successful coach added: "We are now thinking of our first match against Maldives because it is very important to begin the tournament on a winning note. We want to progress match by match and confirm a semifinal berth first. Afterwards we will think about our semifinal match."

Captain Sabina Khatun added: "It is a big tournament for us and we are hopeful and confident of producing better results than the last edition."

The team will leave here for Nepal on September 6.