The venues scheduled to host the second phase of the Bangladesh Premier League will be decided in an emergency executive committee meeting of the Bangladesh Football Federation on Saturday. The BFF’s professional league committee deferred the decision to Saturday after failing to come to a decision in its meeting on Wednesday amid a heated exchange between Dhaka-based clubs and clubs outside Dhaka.
The second phase of the top flight, slated to begin on April 15, was originally planned to be staged on home-and-away basis.
Clubs outside Dhaka were satisfied with the current format along with the professional league committee, who did not want to backtrack from their original decision.
The Dhaka-based clubs though raised several arguments for not playing away from the capital city, including an impending financial crisis and the poor state of the grounds outside Dhaka.
‘Our original stance was to hold the league on home-and-away basis but we decided to host it in Dhaka as the political unrest has now been neutralised. We want to stick with our original decision,’ BFF senior vice-president Abdus Salam Murshedi said on Wednesday.
‘The clubs from Dhaka raised several issues such as financial crisis and the poor state of grounds outside Dhaka and they all want the matches of the rest of the league campaign to be held in Dhaka. That’s why we have decided to hand it over to the executive committee for a final decision,’ added Murshedi.
Meanwhile, the committee also decided that the second phase of the Bangladesh Championship League will start from April 15 at Kamalapur Stadium.
-With New Age input
