No Super Cup next year as well

The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has dropped the money-spinning Super Cup from its 2015-16 calendar, leaving the top clubs with only three competitions -- the Federation Cup, the Bangladesh Premier League and the Independence Cup.

The introduction of Super Cup in 2009 drew huge attention among football fans and Mohammedan SC became champions in that edition to win Tk one crore. But since then the game's governing body has only held twice in the next six years as it was chalked off in the last season too.

“We have been forced to drop the Super Cup from the calendar due to financial constraint this time, but I can assure you that Super Cup will return to future if we can arrange fund for it,” said BFF president Kazi Salahuddin.

The 2015-16 football calendar, which has not been approved yet, was presented before the Professional Football League Committee (PFLC) meeting on Tuesday, which outlined that the season would get underway through Independence Cup (March) followed by Bangladesh Premier League (April-onwards) and Federation Cup (June).

Before the start of the domestic season, the Bangabandhu International Gold Cup involving number of national teams will take place in February while the Sheikh Kamal International Club Cup, organised by Chittagong Abahani, will be held in Chittagong in October.         

Meanwhile, Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club will get an opportunity to tune up before the commencement of the domestic season as the three-time professional league champions are scheduled to play in the AFC Cup play-off matches (January 27 and February 2, 9) while they will get another opportunity to take part in the AFC Cup play-off qualifiers in August (21-27) as the 2014-15 Bangladesh Premier League champions, subject to their qualification in the final round of AFC Cup of 2016.

However, the game's governing body has decided not to send any clubs of the Bangladesh Premier League to any invitational tournament outside the country in the next season in a bid to completing the calendar accordingly.

“In a bid to completing the calendar, we want to stick to it properly and will not arrange any friendly matches in an unplanned manner and we will not even allow clubs to take part in overseas tournaments in the middle of the season,” vowed Salahuddin.

Despite that the game's governing body will need to halt the domestic competitions to accommodate the assignments of the national team, which is supposed to take part in play-off matches of the Asian Cup Qualifiers in June (2, 7) and September (6, 11).