The Bangladesh national football team will not have any engagements for the rest of the year, said a top official of the Bangladesh Football Federation on Saturday.
The national side will sit idle till the end of this year as football’s governing body showed a lack of interest in setting up the promised international competition, the Bangabandhu International football tournament due to the ongoing political situation of the country.
The BFF is now pondering about organising some FIFA friendly matches for the national team in January next year and have instructed the Dutch coaches to plan accordingly.
Head coach Lodewijk de Kruif and assistant coach Rene Koster are now in Thailand spending vacation with their families. After returning to Dhaka, the national teams committee will discuss the future planning of the national side with the Dutch duo.
‘Domestic football will get underway from the third week of November. We have no intention to interrupt domestic football if not absolutely necessary,’ said Tabith Awal, vice president of the BFF and also a member of the national teams committee.
‘We are trying to include Bangladesh in FIFA’s friendly match schedule and hopefully in January we will play a number of friendlies. To increase the rating points in the FIFA rankings, we have to play more international games during the provided scheduled time of FIFA,’ he added.
The Dutch coaches will observe domestic football closely and finalise a strong national team, said Tabith.
‘They [coaches] will watch domestic football and they will also have to visit different professional clubs and share
their coaching methods with the club coaches,’ Tabith said.
After the debacle of the national team in the SAFF Football Championship in September, some BFF officials expressed their reservation with the Dutch coaches but the national teams committee reiterated that they had no intention of bringing an end to the contracts before their scheduled time-frame.
‘We appointed them to develop our football so we have no intention of firing them. Apart from that there has been some growing discontent towards the Dutch coaches. If we fire them then we have to pay the rest of the money mentioned in the contract which will be difficult for us in the present situation,’ Tabith said.
Meanwhile, the BFF was all but determined about not arranging the Bangabandhu International Gold Cup under the current political situation of the country.
‘Considering the current volatile situation of the country we don’t want to take any uncertain decisions about holding the tournament where several national teams were supposed to be involved,’ explained Tabith.
Tabith was of the opinion that in order to build a formidable national side, there should be no compromise in constructing different age-level teams.
‘In recent times our youth teams have performed well abroad. The Under-19 team beat Kuwait in the AFC tournament while the U-16 team claimed third position in the SAFF U-16 Championship. We have plans in place to nurture the young players for a bright future of the national team,’ he added.
-With New Age input
