A once-rich well now drying up

A group of brilliant young footballers put Bangladesh prominently on the map of age-level women's football, especially in South Asia, by clinching the first-ever AFC U-14 Girls' Regional Championship in December 2015. Eighth months later they once again made the whole of Asia sit up and notice by emerging the unbeaten championships in the six-team qualifying round of the AFC U-16 Women's Championship and advancing into the eight-team final round in Thailand.

The girls made history in the country's football by advance to the final round leaving strong teams such as Iran and Chinese Taipei in their wake. They carried their form and success through to the next year to emerge champions in the SAFF U-15 Championships (a few members of the original squad were left out of due to age limitations and were replaced by upcoming talented players) on home soil in December 2017.

The players from Kalsindur Primary School and Kalsindur High School under Mymensingh's Dhobaura upazila were key behind those successes. The likes of Maria Manda, Marzia, Sanjida Akther, Shamsunnar Sr, Shamsunnar Jr, Saraban Tahura, Mahmuda Akter, Sajeda Khatun, Nazma and many others dominated in the age-group squads, which also contained a few booters from Tangail, Sirajganj, Kushtia and Satkhira.

Unfortunately, there are now no players from Dhobaura or Kalsindur in the 15-member squad that the Bangladesh Football Federation announced on Wednesday for the upcoming AFC U-17 Women's Championship Qualifiers to be held in April next year.

There are no players from Dhobaura even in the additional list of entry squads feeding into the national team, although a couple of players have come from of Mymensingh's Nandail upazila. Kalsindur Primary School had once been a role model for other primary schools across the country ever since their eye-catching successes in the Bangamata Primary School Gold Cup.

But the supply line from Dhobaura has dried up and other parts of the country are now producing players, with the current U-17 women's national squad featuring players from 11 districts -- Tangail, Thakurgaon, Mymensingh, Cox'z Bazar, Jamalpur, Sirajganj, Rangpur, Magura, Jhenaidah, Satkhira and Bagerhat.

"The girls from Kalsindur village have been dominating the national teams since 2014. Now they are even dominating U-19, U-20 and the national women's team but unfortunately, there are no Kalsindur representatives at the early age levels at present," national women's team head coach Golam Rabbani Choton told The Daily Star.

"It is a bit frustrating that we can't get players from that productive region, which was supposed to produce more quality players. There may be internal problems, although I actually don't know the exact reasons," said Choton, who basically fine-tunes the skills of players who enter at the age levels.

"But it's a relief that players are coming through different districts, although the supply line of Kalsindur is currently closed. We hope they will provide more players like Maria, Sanjida, Shamsunnahar and Marzia in future."

Mofiz Uddin, a Kalsindur Primary School teacher is the one who nurtured some quality players and led them to two successive Bangamata Gold Cup triumphs in 2013 and 2014. But he is now a teacher at Ronosingha Govt Primary School, some six kilometres away from Kalsindur Primary School.

"As far as I know, girls of Kalsindur are taking part in training regularly but the players are not coming out to the national level. I don't know whether the training is going in the right direction because I have not been with them for nearly three-and-a-half years," said Mofiz. "Maybe the girls are not getting the attention they were getting before. There may be a lack of sincerity from authorities after Kalsindur High School turned into a government school."

Kalsindur may not be consistent in producing quality players lately, but coach Golam Rabbani is hopeful of continuing the consistent performances in the AFC U-17 Women's Championship Qualifiers (which was the AFC U-16 Championship last year) by qualifying for the final round for the third successive time as he has some 10 players out of 15, who have experience of playing international matches.

Meanwhile, some 33 players from the U-17 and U-20 squads reported to Choton yesterday and training will start at the BFF artificial turf from today.