<i>Crisis of common sense</i>
Argentina's arrival on September 5, two days after the initially scheduled date, makes little difference to anyone in Bangladesh football or the team in question, but the delay begs an uncomfortable question.
The issue is not with the Bangladesh Football Federation's ability to run the game; Kazi Salahuddin's reign has seen the country's erstwhile most popular game come back to the fore and that too on a regular basis, which is mightily important. Neither is it a question of integrity or anything of a higher calling, but a simple lack of common sense that is prevalent among organisers across all sports in the country.
Argentina's wait in Kolkata after the Friday game against Venezuela is now universally blamed on Dhaka's traffic situation and while none would disagree that the city's congestions are a massive logistical hindrance, the BFF could have easily avoided the situation by being a little proactive and of course, clever. On both counts, as far as making the necessary arrangements for the practice session is concerned, they have failed miserably.
After officially confirming the Argentina-Nigeria international friendly in late April and having known the schedule -- arrival on September 3, open training session for the public and media the next day, a closed-door session on the eve of the game and the match on September 6 -- since then, it is slightly naïve to suggest that the BFF didn't have enough time to draw up preparations.
They could have prepared one of the two football venues in Dhaka and though it wouldn't have been an easy job to get either the Army Stadium or the football ground in Kamalapur ready, it isn't too hard to build a quality dressing room in four months.
Maybe Kamalapur wasn't appealing enough but the venue in Banani should have been developed.
Instead they planned to hold the open training session in far-flung Fatullah, at the well-furnished cricket stadium. It was still a decent arrangement but BFF's slipshod approach from the start made it a tight bargain. It was obvious that if pushed through the right channels, the Bangladesh Cricket Board's hand would have been forced to let BFF use the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur for Argentina's open practice session, let alone Fatullah.
What BFF did next is well-documented; the travelling arrangement for the advance party from Argentina who came in mid-August was so poor that the round-trip to Fatullah took five hours.
One is pressed here to fully blame BFF for this chaos, but it is a well-known fact that the football federation has been a one-man show since Salahuddin became chief in 2008. It obviously doesn't mean that the legendary footballer doesn't let anyone work; his colleagues have not done anything meaningful for a very long time.
This Argentina affair could have been such a happy occasion for Bangladesh football but instead, Salahuddin is left to hope for what could have been and how good it should have been.
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