Maradona coming within two months?

A Celebrity Management Group (CMG) official yesterday claimed they will bring Argentine football legend Diego Maradona to Bangladesh for the launching of the Bangladesh Super Soccer, a franchise football league proposed to be held here at the end of this year.

“We will bring Diego (Maradona) for an official launching of the league within the next two months, even though we are planning to hold the league sometime towards the end of this year. I will be meeting Diego in Madrid on January 29 and then I can confirm the exact timing of Diego's arrival,” executive director of CMG, Bhaswar Goswami, who met with Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) president Kazi Salahuddin, told reporters yesterday.

Salahuddin confirmed that he has given a letter of intent to the CMG official to go ahead with their plans, but said that BFF will only engage in further talks to work out the details of the league once Maradona comes to Dhaka for the official launching.

“If Maradona comes here, we will be able to comprehend the viability of such a league in our country because of the hype and interest his arrival will create. Only then we can give the CMG the official confirmation to go ahead with the league,” the BFF president told reporters.

According to CMG's proposal, which was first tabled before the BFF on December 23 last year, the franchise league will feature eight teams, which will be owned by Bangladeshi companies while each of those teams will have a foreign club (European and Latin American) as partner to provide the teams with foreign players and coaching staff. The league will feature 61 matches spanning 12 weeks and will be held on home and away basis across eight venues.

Goswami also claimed that they have acquired official confirmation from Brazilian club Flamengo to be partners of one of the clubs while talks with some other clubs are also in progress.

The CMG is a Kolkata-based sports management company which had previously brought Maradona to Kolkata and also played a key role in organising the FIFA International friendly between Argentina and Nigeria in Dhaka in September 2011.