Time for an Italian

Italian tactician Fabio Lopez was appointed the head coach of the Bangladesh national football team yesterday on a four-month contract, until the completion of the SAFF Championship, which will be held in Kerala, India from December 23.

The appointment of Lopez -- who is the 16th foreign coach overall and the first Italian of the Bangladesh national football team -- was all but confirmed on Wednesday after a fruitful meeting with Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) president Kazi Salahuddin and the subsequent departure of Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif the same day.

The announcement came yesterday afternoon at a press conference at the BFF House, after an emergency meeting of the executive committee had endorsed the appointment of the 42-year-old coach along with assistant coach Costantino Zuccarini and fitness coach Angelo Pavia, both from Italy.

"I am an Italian and that makes me more motivated to do this job well. I now have double responsibility because I must have to show as an Italian and secondly, I have to honour the gift I got today [Thursday]," said Fabio, adding that he was given a big responsibility.

A UEFA A licensed coach, Fabio, who is waiting for his UEFA professional license, has received the opportunity to guide a national team for the first time in his career. The coach watched two matches of Bangladesh's World Cup-Asian Cup Qualifiers and said that he found some errors in Bangladesh's play, especially from a tactical aspect.

"My opinion from what I have seen in the last two matches is that we must work a lot on tactics. They played very bad tactically. So I will try to improve this with my technical staff who will come soon [by September 13]. I think we must bring a winning mentality to the team. I didn't see a winning mentality in those games. I saw the faces of the players were a little sad every time they played. It is alright if we concede a goal, but we must score two goals," said Fabio.

Fabio will guide Bangladesh in three out of their four remaining matches of the World Cup-Asian Cup Qualifiers while also taking them through the SAFF meet. Bangladesh are also supposed to take part in the Promise Cup in Maldives in November as part of their preparation for the regional extravaganza.

Fabio will start the national team's training camp from September 15, ahead of his first assignment against Kyrgyzstan on October 13 -- an away match of the World Cup-Asian Cup Qualifiers.

It has been learnt that the game's governing body has to spend 15,000 dollars per month on the three Italian coaches.