BFF mulls new academy

Kazi Salahuddin, the president of the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF), is contemplating building a Football Academy elsewhere after having scrapped the plan of running a soccer academy in Sylhet. Salahuddin expressed his views after failing to get exclusive rights on the newly-built Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protisthan (BKSP) in the north-east region of the country.
“We politely turned down the government’s decision a couple of days earlier because the section they (the sports regulatory body) wanted to lease us could only meet half our demands. And, we are now thinking of establishing a private football academy elsewhere in the country with 250 budding footballers,” Salahuddin told reporters at the BFF House yesterday.
The National Sports Council in early September had agreed to lease a part of the Sylhet sports institution to the Bangladesh Football Federation on conditions after the football’s governing body appealed to allocate the Sylhet BKSP to run a 100-player football academy.
“It was not possible to get a fruitful outcome, if we started an academy at the Sylhet BKSP with only 50 to 55 footballers. Because, the number of players would have been reduced to 30-35 due to the different problems of the players. But we want to get the hundred percent outcome from the academy and are planning for a private football academy that might be a profitable organisation,” said Salahuddin, also the president of the South Asian Football Federation.
The BFF boss said that they would generate Tk 30 crore for the football academy through floating shares if needed.
“To generate the amount, we may float shares with each share worth Tk 10 lakh and later the profit will be distributed amongst the shareholders in a certain period after selling the footballers.”
Salahuddin informed that half of the amount would be spent to build the academy with modern facilities and the rest of money would be set as a fixed deposit to run the academy around the year.
He also informed the academy would also give general lessons on English, Mathe-matics and Bangla.

Courtesy of The Daily Star