Bangladesh Football Federation on Friday decided to suspend the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League after eight round matches due to Under-18 national football team’s preparation for the inaugural SAFF Under-18 Championship. The tournament is scheduled to be held in Bhutan from September 18 to 27. The decision came after a meeting of BFF’s professional football league committee at the BFF House on Friday.
Bangladesh national football team’s Australian coach, Andrew Ord, who is also in charge of the Under-18 team, has already started the preparation of the team from August 7 with most of the players out of 23-member squad coming from different BPL clubs.
‘All participating clubs have agreed the suspension of the league considering national interest,’ BFF’s senior vice-president Abdus Salam Murshedy said on Friday.
‘The clubs also have agreed to release their respective players after the eighth round matches which will be held from September 10 to 13.
‘After completion of the eighth round, the league will suspend for at least three weeks and we are yet to decide the resumption date.’
Salam said the gap would also provide Bangabandhu National Stadium some rest as the games’ governing body organised all 42 matches of seven rounds in this field.
Earlier they had to suspend the fourth round matches of the league for three days due to unplayable condition of the field caused by torrential rain.
‘In this gap, we will get some time to repair our both venues in Dhaka and Chittagong and hopefully we would hold rest of the matches of the league in both venues,’ said Salam, who added that they are seriously thinking to bring some notable changes in the season’s calendar to balance with the international calendar.
‘We discussed the issue in our last executive committee meeting where the top body instructed us to chalk a new calendar following the international calendar.’
-With New Age input
