Booters' silent return

Only repairing the national football team would not be good enough to revive Bangla-desh's status as one of the strongest nations in South Asia where every single team is making progress.
After the disastrous SAFF Championship campaign in Sri Lanka, experts believe the football's governing body needs a fresh outlook into preparation of the national team in near future.
While a team like Bhutan, who had no pedigree even in the regional football scene and lost all their all SAFF Championship matches in 2003 and 2005, made the semifinals this year and almost forced holders India into the penalty shootout before losing the knockout match 2-1 in the dying seconds of extra-time yesterday to end gracefully, Bangladesh team's return home yesterday was as silent as possible.
Draws against Bhutan (1-1) and Afghanistan (2-2) and a loss to co-hosts Sri Lanka (0-1) are all Bangladesh have after playing three consecutive finals. The 2003 champions, who have now not won an international in 17 attempts in 26 months, never look prepared at all for this event.
"We have fallen behind. The difference with other teams is very distinctive and wide and if our state of football remains same and we don't have domestic leagues in time, we would never be able to beat a team like Bhutan," commented Bangladesh Football Federation president Kazi Salahuddin, who has been planning to appoint foreign coaches of the senior and junior national teams.
"Whether the others improve or not does not matter. We have to improve our own condition first," added Salahuddin, a former national footballer and coach.
Coach Abu Yusuf, who has been blamed for picking up the wrong squad under influence of a few officials of the BFF's past committee, was quoted by a local newspaper that he did not get the freedom to choose the team in Colombo.
Yusuf, who ignored a lot of senior players and chose a young side, was not available for comment last night but national team manager Sheikh Mohammed Aslam denied the allegations.
"I have never tried to influence Yusuf bhai during the trip. We have played together and I respect him as a senior player. I don't know whether any other person has done this or not," Aslam told The Daily Star.
"As manager, I was involved with the team when it was all built up. I still believe we started our preparation late. If it started in time, there was no reason for us to end like this.
"It now looks certain that while everyone has advanced, we just sat back. Also, we did not have quality players in this team," opined the former national striker.
"We have to spread the game throughout the country tofind quality footballers and with the South Asian Games coming to Bangladesh next year, we have to start preparing immediately. We will also need foreign coaches."
Aslam thought that only the coach or the players should not be blamed for this poor result. "The careless thoughts of the previous BFF committee should be held responsible for this.
"Although we had a young team, they were really slow and were never able to cope with the speedy oppositions. Why, because most of our players are not matured.
"We missed two vital players -- Joy and Emily -- against Sri Lanka and the inexperienced side failed to cope with the pressure of a must win situation," said Aslam.
Captain Aminul Haque, who was dropped for the last game, admitted that the standard of Bangladesh has really deteriorated.
"We have never played this bad in any tournament. In fact, nowhere in the world a team is shuffled so much. We had just five-six senior players in the side and that is one of reasons behind this failure," said the goalkeeper.
"After our last match, Joy told in a meeting that the national team jersey does not hold any weight any more. I agree with his comments. These days, I feel that any one can get a national jersey."