Bangladesh Under-20 women's team will look to build on their recent run of form when they face hosts Laos in their opening Group H match of the AFC U-20 Women's Asian Cup Qualifiers today.

The match is set to kick off at 6:30pm at the Lao National Stadium in Vientiane.

From the senior side to the youth teams, the women in red and green have shown steady progress under English coach Peter Butler. Last month, he guided the senior national team to their first-ever Women's Asian Cup qualification before leading the U-20s to an unbeaten title run in the SAFF U-20 Women's Championship at home.

Butler's squad will aim to carry that momentum into the Asian qualifiers, strengthened by a mix of senior players and rising talents who impressed in the recent SAFF campaign. Still, Bangladesh's track record at this level offers little comfort -- they failed to clear the qualifiers in their five previous attempts between 2006 and 2023.

In the last edition, however, they managed a breakthrough of sorts, beating Turkmenistan 4-0 before narrowly losing 1-0 to Iran, who scored just five minutes from time to top the three-team group.

This campaign, too, presents a steep challenge -- especially with two-time champions South Korea in the mix -- but Bangladesh remain hopeful of strong showings against Timor-Leste and Laos.

"Our goal is to make an impact," Peter Butler said during the pre-tournament briefing in Laos yesterday. "I think the most important thing is we know we're streets behind [South] Korea in terms of their actual professionalism, organisation, investment, quality of players, etc.

"We've restarted… we've achieved a long-term goal by qualifying for the Women's Asian Cup next March. Obviously, this is a very, very important competition for us in terms of seeing where we are, and in terms of development at the U-20 level," added the English coach.

Captain Afeida Khandokar added: "We have come here to qualify for the finals and we will be trying our level best to display a good show in every match."

South Korea -- also twice finishing third -- are favourites to top the four-team group. Bangladesh, however, could still qualify for the 12-team final round as one of the three best runners-up from eight groups. For that, they must rack up big wins over Timor-Leste and Laos, and limit the damage against South Korea in the final match.

Laos remain something of an unknown for Bangladesh, though they have pedigree at this level -- having beaten Myanmar 4-2 in 2018 and drawn 2-2 with the Philippines in the previous edition.

Still, it's Bangladesh's young women who have been rewriting the script in recent months. And they'll hope to keep that momentum going on Asia's bigger stage.

Peter Butler. Photo: BFF

"We've restarted… Obviously, this is a very, very important competition for us in terms of seeing where we are, and in terms of development at the U-20 level."

— Bangladesh coach Peter Butler