Two months after the completion of last season, country’s top booters return to action today as the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) is set to launch an off-season training camp to keep the national footballers in action ahead of three international engagements next year.
Bangladesh are scheduled to take part in the 25th U-18 International Tournament in Russia from January 4-14 while the national team are scheduled to play AFC Challenge Cup qualifiers from March 2-17 and Bangladesh U-23 team, the defending champions of the SA Games, will be participating in the upcoming SA Games in India, even though the date of the tournament has not been finalised yet.
In the past, the football’s governing body had sent national teams to different regional, AFC and FIFA tournaments with a short period of training which resulted in catastrophic outcome. The national team was eliminated from group stage of the last SAFF Football Championship without a single victory while the U-22 team exited the AFC U-22 Asia Cup from group stage after being humiliated 4-1 by minnows Nepal.
But this time the BFF plans to give the booters more time to prepare themselves both physically and as a team, in order to survive throughout the season. The BFF has called up 81 booters for training, who will be split into four groups and play competitive matches among themselves in the next ten days before the phase-2 camp with 30 booters will get underway in September 5 before the season’s curtain-raising tournament — Federation Cup — gets underway on September 24.
The Salahuddin-led committee had arranged such off-season training camps for the national booters once before in 2009 under the guidance of Brazilian coach Edson Silva Dido and Bangladesh crossed the hurdle of AFC Challenge Cup Qualifiers subsequently before making it to the semifinals of the SAFF Football Championship held on home soil.
Satyajit Das Rupu, a member of BFF National Teams Committee, believes such training camps would help the players regain their fitness before joining their clubs and it would help developing the understanding between the players.
The players will stay at the tents of Ababahi, Mohammedan and dormitory of Birshreshtha Shaheed Mostafa Kamal Stadium and train at the Bangabandhu National Stadium, BSMKS, astro-turf, the grounds of Military Museum and the Physical Education Institute.
-With The Daily Star input
