Fabio's days numbered?
Italian coach Fabio Lopez's time at the Bangladesh helm is likely to come to an end within a few days as the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) high-ups are unhappy with the performance of the team in the ongoing invitational tournament in China.
The Italian replaced Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif on September 10 and was appointed for a four-month contract, which should have run until the completion of December's SAFF Championship. However, Lopez is all but set to lose his job only 11 weeks into his work, the shortest ever tenure for any foreign coach of Bangladesh, according to hints provided from the BFF.
“We are not happy with the performance of the national team and the game's governing body is thinking deeply about him [Fabio Lopez],” said BFF general secretary Abu Nayeem Shohag, adding that BFF president Kazi Salahuddin, vice presents Kazi Nabil Ahmed and Tabith M Awal are concerned over the performance of the national team. The trio is supposed to hold a meeting today in this regard.
After taking over, Lopez ran some extreme experiments with the team, bringing positional changes to key players and tinkering with team combination. It is believed that these experiments have had an adverse impact on the players' performances.
Under the guidance of Lopez, Bangladesh lost three World Cup and Asian Cup qualifying matches against Kyrgyzstan (2-0), Tajikistan (5-0) and Australia (4-0) before conceding defeats against Myanmar (3-2) and Lijiang (2-1) in China.
Shohag said that a positive result against Hebei in today's match may give Fabio a lifeline but a source inside the federation has ruled out any possibility of keeping faith with the Italian.
The source informed that the game's governing body is thinking about appointing a coaching staff with the combination of a local coach and a foreign coach, who is most likely to be Gonzalo Sanchez Moreno. The Spaniard is already working as a BFF youth development coach.
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