District football gets fresh impetus

The District Football Associations (DFA) are likely to start much-awaited district football leagues from March-April after the government recently came up with a healthy financial package in this regard for the first time.

Since the separation from government-affiliated District Sports Associations in 2008, the government stopped financing DFAs and as a result most DFAs failed to run football activities due to financial constraints since the DFAs do not get any financial assistance from either Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) or the government. The district leagues have largely been overlooked over the last 10 years, leading to an acute crisis of quality footballers.

Ahead of every BFF poll, the presidential candidates promise to assist the DFAs with healthy financial packages, but the district leagues have remained ignored, with exception of two seasons when Nitol Tata and Prime Bank came forward to sponsor the leagues. 

Before the 2016 BFF election, Kazi Salahuddin promised to pay attention to district football but no initiative was seen taken in last 22 months. Finally the BFF boss has managed to ensure Tk 1.42 crore from the government to get the DFAs functional by running the district leagues.

“The finance ministry has allocated Tk 1.42 crore to run district football league one week ago and we will get that money through the youth and sports ministry. I went to the finance ministry on Monday and the process of releasing the money is going on. We expect to get it by next month,” BFF general secretary Abu Nayeem Shohag informed yesterday.

“We will sit for a meeting next month to decide on starting district leagues. We have already verbally asked many DFAs to take preparation for their respective leagues,” Shohag said. “We will initially distribute Tk one lakh to each DFA and ask them to collect another Tk one lakh by submitting schedules of their league and get the rest of the amount by submitting the documents of expenditure.”

There might have been instruction from the government to spend the allotted money within the end of the ongoing fiscal, but the game's local governing body may seek one month more if it cannot complete leagues in all 64 districts by the stipulated time.

Majority of DFAs have not held district leagues since the completion of Nitol Tata Sheikh Kamal District Football League in 2015 except for 15 DFAs, which are holding their leagues regularly with their own funding.

Shohag informed that they would try to get the government's financial allocation for DFAs every year after successfully completing the district leagues this year.