With the concept of making a complete footballer, the Creative Football School supervised by two AFC A licence-holder coaches Maruful Haque and Saiful Bari Titu began its journey yesterday at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) ground.
Some 48 budding players aged between 11 and 13 are the initial students of the school, which has primarily targeted youngsters aged between seven and eleven, a period which is believed to be perfect time for learning.
“Football is not only a game, it is a lifestyle and apart from football training, we will teach our students how to behave with others and how to respect each other, develop their mental strength, physiological and social skill,” said Saiful Bari, one of the six directors of the school.
As the school has no permanent premises, the schooling will take place in the BUET ground. The organisers have a plan to extend its campus in Dhanmondi and Gulshan in future if they can get a good response from parents, who however have to pay monthly fees for their children.
“We are not looking for any profit at the moment; rather we want to gain the faith of the parents and others that we are teaching the boys something different. As we will appoint educated coaches, we will need some money for their wages, so we will collect some monthly fees from the students,” said Maruful Haque.
“We have already collected some curriculum from some world famous football coaching institutions and have finalised the syllabus of our students after making those curriculum appropriable in our context,” said Haque, who is also the chief instructor of BUET.
There are a few football coaching centres in the capital, even the discipline of football is a major subject in the Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protisthan but they could hardly produce any sensible and quality players. However, most of the country’s footballers are being groomed up without perfect training that leads them to struggle in the national and international level.
“Coaching system at our grassroot level is so traditional which is being followed for the last 50 years and the traditional coaching system is keeping the boys out of the modern training system.
“If we can run this school for a few years, the standard of our football will be changed,” said Haque adding that they would make arrange to take their students to main stream football.
Apart from Haque, Saiful, former footballers Imtiaz Ahmed Nakib, Jewel Rana, Ataur Rahman Ata and national discard goalkeeper Aminul Haque are also involved with this initiatives.
Vice-chancellor of BUET, professor SM Nazrul Islam inaugurated the activities of CFS while former national coaches Golam Sarwar Tipu, Shafiqul Islam Manik, Jasimuddin Joshy, Sajjad Hossain Siddique and BFF member Amirul Islam were among others present.
-With The Daily Star input
