Another false dawn?

Why is Sheikh Kamal International Club Cup football tournament that concluded in the port city on Friday a stupendous success? Firstly, it has drawn enormous enthusiasm among the football fans, which was evident in that blockbuster final. Secondly, it was a fairytale story of an otherwise non-descript hosts who went all the way to lifting their maiden silverware.

But will this tournament have any far-reaching impact on our domestic football front, which has been starving for even a decent crowd for a long time? Optimists, who belie logic, will come up with the same old rhetoric they have been spouting after any international football tournament, saying that this event has 'once again proven how popular football is in our country and what we need is to build on it.'

Unfortunately, it has always been the case of forgotten reality; a reality that football officials in Bangladesh, who once thought that the game will die if it is not played at the Bangabandhu National Stadium (BNS), never realised.

Chittagong Abahani, the organisers of the tournament, named after one of the champion visionaries in country's sports, are now understandably very excited and are making a lot of promises like fielding the strongest possible team for the Bangladesh Premier League next season, launching its own academy and hosting the event annually with more teams from the next edition.

But amidst all the euphoria and high hopes they are perhaps missing the vital point. The biggest portrait of this successful tournament is a giant-size smiling image of late Sheikh Kamal and with him the cheering fans in their thousands.

Sheikh Kamal is the creator of a brand called Abahani, a team that not only produced something different in the 70s but also unfolded the biggest sporting rivalry the country has ever witnessed or will ever see, that between Abahani and Mohammedan. We also saw the rise of Brothers Union as a third force in domestic football for a while, but the reality is that the country's football fan-base is still rooting for that rivalry to be revived.

In Friday's final when Zahid Hossain sped down the right flank sporting that famous Sky Blue shirt, the crowd in the stands and millions in front of television sets roared in anticipation of something that matched many of those forgotten moments of Abahani-Mohammedan rivalry.

We can have a Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club winning some domestic silverware, the return of Muktijoddha Sangsad as one of the title contenders, or Chittagong Abahani winning their first-ever major domestic title but, as it has always been the case, the crowd hardly turned up to see those teams winning titles.

The basic difference is that Sheikh Kamal's Abahani tried to win hearts more than just winning titles. It had created its own heroes, not just a Kingsley who may never make a lasting impression in the fans' minds.

Shekih Kamal always focused on home-grown players and those players eventually built the biggest fans-base for Abahani.

Fans deserted domestic football not solely because of the absence of Abahani-Mohammedan rivalry -- it is perhaps the most prominent reason -- but there were other factors at work such as the failure of the clubs to groom a football culture of their own. The current officials of both Abahani and Mohammedan will have to take the lion's share of the blame. The unbridled passion that the club officials in those days worked with is hard to find among their successors.

But make no mistake the fans will root for anything that a dreamer like Sheikh Kamal thrived to achieve.