August-May football season from now on?

The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) is planning to reduce the time-frame of next football season in an attempt to match the international schedule of the national team as well as the club sides.

Keeping this in mind, the game’s local governing body has drafted a calendar in which the players’ transfer window for next Bangladesh Premier League gets underway from August 16 while season’s curtain-raising tournament, Federation Cup, is scheduled to start from October 21. The 12th edition of the BPL has been scheduled from December 2019 to May 2020.     

“A few executive members, who have been involved with the clubs, requested the meeting whether the ongoing professional football league can be completed by July 31 instead of August 8 because the BFF has prepared next season’s calendar which starts from August 16. So we have to rearrange the schedule soon. We will sit with the clubs within a couple of days to fix everything,” said BFF’s senior vice-president and league committee chairman Abdus Salam Murshedy after its executive meeting at the BFF house yesterday.

However, the initiative of the game’s local governing body is likely to face challenge from small clubs, who struggle to form squads every season due to financial constraints. Those clubs have not responded to the proposal sent by the BFF.

“This season’s league has been lengthy because of national elections and some other reasons but we want to match our domestic calendar with international schedule. If we can do that, we will get success with the national team as well as with clubs. This year we got success with the national team and Abahani have also been performing well in the AFC Cup because all players have been in action in domestic competitions.

“We know it will be tough for the small clubs to take part in the transfers within a few days after the completion of the league, but if we want to do well at international level, we must follow the August-May calendar. Then we can also use the FIFA window for the national team and the clubs will also play the AFC Cup without any interruption,” said BFF vice-president Kazi Nabil Ahmed.

BFF thanked the Prime Minister and Finance Minister for allocating Tk 20 crore for football and Nabil informed that the fund will be used for the national team, women’s team and development work.

Murshedy informed that BFF estimated Tk 6.5 crore per year for its football academy in Beraid all of which will be borne by sponsors Fortis Group and K-Sports.