The Bangladesh Football Federation has finally realised that without the nurturing of age-level footballers from grass-root level across the country, it is impossible to be successful in world football.
As a result, the BFF’s development committee on Saturday took some notable decisions to start age-level programmes considering the busy international schedules in future.Earlier in this year, Bangladesh Under-16 national football team clinched the SAFF Under-16 Championship title that forced the BFF high-ups to focus on the grass-root level.
The AFC Under-14, 16 and 19 championship qualifiers will be held next year and BFF has decided to send their teams in those tournaments as well as decided to participate in the Asian Youth Football tournament, to be held in the same year.
Before that, the organisation will form an Under-12 national team ahead of the Super Mokh Cup football festival, scheduled to be held in Malaysia on December 7-11.
BFF’s development committee chairman Badal Roy on Saturday said that they want to send the Under-14, 16 and 18 players in their National Academy in Sylhet for long term preparation.
He also informed that the BFF is going to start a year-long training programme after the youth and sports ministry have decided to provide financial support to it.
‘National Sports Council will provide us with a small amount from the Tk 20 crore that they will receive from the sports ministry for training purpose for all the sports,’ Badal told reporters on Saturday.
‘This money will be used for two separate U-14 and U-16 tournaments and we will also bring them under a year-long training programme.’
Badal added that they are going to merge the ongoing Bangabandhu Gold Cub Primary School Football tournament and Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib Primary School Football tournament, organised by ministry of primary and mass education to scout football talents.
‘The nation-wide tournaments provide a huge number of footballing talents across the country. So that we have decided to scout the players for a long-term training,’ said Roy.
-With New Age input
