Football season starts December 18

The upcoming football season (2019-2020) is set to get underway on December 18 through the Federation Cup at the Bangabandhu National Stadium with 13 clubs expected to take part in the tournament.

Following the Federation Cup, the Bangabandhu Gold Cup international football tournament will take place midway through January while the Bangladesh Premier League is expected to roll onto the ground during the last week of the same month.

These decisions were made at a professional football league committee meeting, which was chaired by Bangladesh Football Federation senior vice president, Abdus Salam Murshedy, at the Bangladesh Football Federation House yesterday.

“The meeting has decided to start the upcoming season on December 18 through the Federation Cup which is likely to end on January 7 or 8. Then, there will be two weeks for the preparation of the national football team and the participation of Bangabandhu Gold Cup as all club representatives agreed to release their respective national footballers for the camp as well as the international tournament,” said Murshedy after the meeting.

“We want to start the professional football league in the last week of January and the mid-term transfers’ window has preliminary been fixed for first two week of April [1-15],” he continued, adding that they are also considering the increase of venues for the premier league.

“In previous year, six venues were used but one of them was dropped due to the ground’s poor condition. However, Chattogram Abahani decided to use its previous venue of MA Aziz Stadium in Chattogram as three more venues -- Narsingdi, Manikganj and Cumilla -- have been in consideration but all that depends on the fulfilment of the criteria and the interest of the clubs,” said Murshedy. The senior vice president also informed that they want to increase the number of venues in order to shorten the time-frame of the league as the BFF have a tight schedules for next season.