A little further ahead, a group of supporters stood before a TV camera, their voices hoarse from shouting, "Bhua (Fraud)! Bhua!"

Who were they shouting at? The answer didn't take long to find. Their anger was directed at Bangladesh's head coach, Javier Cabrera. Their chants echoed frustration, pain, and paralysis:  "As long as this coach stays, we won't come to the stadium!"

But the question remains: will they really stay away? And if they do, will football once again sink into the abyss of despair?

To understand this frustration, one has to look back just a year -- to a time when Bangladesh football seemed to be standing tall again, like the lost glory of the 1990s reborn. The love for football was beginning to stir once more in people's hearts.

It all began on a Premier League pitch in England where Hamza Choudhury, born and raised abroad, chose to wear the red and green out of sheer love for his roots. For a moment, the whole nation stood still. A young man who had grown up on foreign turf declared, "I am Bangladesh."

Soon after, Canada-based midfielder Shamit Shome followed in his footsteps, and it felt as though football itself had begun to breathe again. Excitement swept through the younger generation -- from social media to tea stalls, from alleyways to living rooms, everyone was talking about it. People believed that perhaps the spirit of football, once the pride of thousands, was returning.

Then came the Asian Cup Qualifier against Singapore -- an evening on June 10 that felt like a festival. As soon as the gates opened, crowds poured in. Inside the stadium there were thousands, and outside, twice as many. Police and security personnel struggled to contain the surge, yet all that filled the air were chants of a single word: "Bangladesh!"

But football, as everyone learned that day, cannot be won on emotion alone. The final scoreline showed Bangladesh had lost -- and with that loss went trust, belief, and direction. Many supporters vented their anger at the referee, whose decisions were controversial, including a clear penalty not given.

Those who understood the game, however, saw the defeat differently. To them, Cabrera had turned the match into a strange experiment, with the players reduced to subjects of the Spaniard's tactical trial and error.

Yet it seemed Cabrera had learned little from that lesson. Against Hong Kong, China, he once again appeared intent on proving his critics wrong. The same name that had been linked with repeated failures -- Saad Uddin -- was once again fielded at left-back. From Nepal to Sri Lanka to Seychelles, dreams of victory had crumbled through his errors.