Combined panel makes hefty promises
The Kazi Salahuddin-led combined panel yesterday disclosed a 25-point manifesto for the upcoming Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) polls, with pledges to strengthen District Football Associations, to make the Sylhet Football Academy functional, revive the national, youth and club football championships and send 40 budding footballers abroad for long-term training.
Ruhul Amin Tarafder, chief coordinator of the panel's election cell and Chittagong Abahani's football committee chairman, read out a written statement at a city hotel yesterday after highlighting the activities of the incumbent BFF executive committee over the last eight years. The other candidates of the panel, except for Salahuddin, were present during the declaration.
Other notable pledges of the manifesto are: helping Dhaka clubs technically and financially to form age-level teams; helping DFAs to run football coaching centres; taking initiatives with assistance of government and private companies to set up football academies at district and Upazila level; tying up football academies with foreign academies; appointing BFF-paid coaches at district level; distributing 100,000 footballs across the country each year; building up an international standard fitness centre for the national footballer and bringing national footballers under salary structure and insurance; appointing a foreign coaching staff; arranging four to five international friendly matches each year; taking initiatives to install astro-turfs at divisional headquarters gradually; holding the Bangabandhu Gold Cup, Sheikh Kamal International Club Cup, Franchise-based Bangladesh Super League; including district representatives in all BFF sub-committees; conduct coaches' and referees' training courses and sending them overseas for attaining better standard.
The manifesto, however, failed to address the much-talked-about 'Vision 2020 programme'; setting a clear target for the national team in four years following three consecutive failures in the SAFF Championship; and the announcement of bringing Bangladesh Premier League clubs into professional structure.
There were also no indications in the manifesto as to how those promises would be materialised by the cash-strapped football's governing body.
“As most of the fund provided by FIFA and AFC is spent for BFF staff and maintenance, we will be trying to convince the government to include football in the annual budget apart from our effort to collect fund from sponsors to achieve our goals,” said BFF's senior vice-president Abdus Salam Murshedy, who has already been elected unopposed.
“We, all the 21 candidates, have agreed to the 25-point pledges before finalising it, and we are committed to implementing those if we are elected,” said incumbent BFF vice-president Badal Roy, who is also the member secretary of the panel's election cell.
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