The Bangladesh Football Federation on Saturday has terminated the contracts of national team’s Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif and his assistant Rene Koster accusing them of negligence of duties. BFF president Kazi Salahuddin announced the decision after a meeting of national team management committee held on Friday night when most of the members voted in favour of dismissing the Dutch duo.
‘We have decided to part away with the Dutch coaches as they are not sincere in their job,’ Salahuddin told reporters at his office.
‘We appointed them 14 months [16 months] ago and they spent a total of 210 days at home showing one or other excuses.’
‘If they had any problems with the salary issue, they could have discussed it with us face to face but it’s not acceptable to demand money while sitting at home,’ said a frustrated BFF president.
Salahuddin revealed that BFF could have sacked the Dutch coaches two and half-months ago for the same reason.
‘In the executive committee meeting held in two-and-half months ago, most of the members told me to sack them [the Dutch coaches].
‘But I personally wanted to give them more time to change their attitude but they didn’t change,’ he said
De Kruif is scheduled to arrive on Saturday from Netherlands and BFF said it will hand over the termination letter to him upon arrival.
BFF’s move came after Kruif lodged a complaint to FIFA over four months of unpaid wages. Kruif also termed BFF officials as ‘liars’ during a recent Facebook comment.
Earlier Kruif refused to return to Dhaka and take charge of the national team before two upcoming FIFA friendly matches against Sri Lanka on October 24 and 27 until he received the unpaid wages.
He changed his mind and took the flight on Saturday evening only for the BFF to take a tough stance this time.
Salahuddin said they will also go to FIFA to determine if they Dutch coaches owe any money to BFF at all as they did not work most of the time.
Salahuddin claimed they paid the salary of 12 months and the rest will be paid only after the arbitration with FIFA is completed.
‘We will send our report to FIFA tomorrow [today] and inform them all the details of what the coaches did and FIFA will take the final decision,’ said Salahuddin.
Kruif and Koster joined the Bangladesh team in July 2013 initially on a one-year contract with a provision of extension for further one year.
Under his supervision, Bangladesh national team played seven international matches, winning just two against three defeats and two draws.
He also guided Bangladesh Under-19 and Under-23 teams in the AFC Under-19 qualifiers and recently concluded Asian Games respectively.
Bangladesh Under-19 team played four matches and won only one. The Under-23 team displayed some progress in Asian Games where they beat Afghanistan but lost against Uzbekistan and Hong Kong.
Before taking part in the Asiad, they also played two friendly matches against Nepal under-23 team winning one and losing the other.
Assistant coach Saiful Bari Titu was appointed as interim coach for the Sri Lanka matches.
-With New Age input
