Less than half of what was promised

Exactly one year ago on this day the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) unveiled its four-year calendar, terming it football's development plan, in the face of huge criticism following the national team's debacle against lowly Bhutan in the Asian Cup Qualifying Play-Off.

The BFF's technical and strategic director Paul Smalley prepared a calendar for 2017 that included 18 competitions from grassroots to the top level for men and women separate from the six international tournaments abroad and two international tournaments at home.

BFF president Kazi Salahuddin, who retained his post for a third successive term in April 2016, stated then that after having seen through his primary objective of keeping football rolling through the first eight years of his tenure, he now wished to see the country's football take a step forward by implementing a number of new objectives over the next four years.

And with almost two years of his third four-year term having passed, Salahuddin has still not managed to take football outside the capital as district football continues to be overlooked year after year, which has caused the pipeline of footballers to shrink.

At the one-year mark of the much-hyped BFF calendar, the Salahuddin-led committee has managed to implement less than half of the planned activities for 2017 so far. The Dhaka-based football competitions have been partially completed, although there is still uncertainty looming over the Independence Cup and Youth Football Tournament for professional football clubs.

However although most of the Dhaka-based competitions are being held every year, the game's governing body is sadly not interested in maintaining the timeframe mentioned in the calendar and unpredictably scraps tournaments citing time constraints and unwillingness from participating clubs.

Nobody can argue that Salahuddin kept football rolling around the year, but that is only applicable to the top-tier football in Dhaka. The lower tier competitions hardly get any attention from the BFF boss.

While it is pleasing that the Dhaka Metropolis Senior and Second Division Football League were staged after two-to-three-year gaps, unfortunately the National School Championship, last held in 2012, continues to be overlooked.

The district football leagues are also in limbo and have not taken place for the past two years despite the BFF boss promising that he would provide the District Football Association with enough funds to run their leagues.

Besides those, tournaments such as the National District Championship, National District Youth Championship and National Club Cup Championship have all but disappeared from the calendar.

In the 14 months since their defeat to Bhutan, the national football side has sat idle as the BFF failed to arrange any friendly international matches while the age-group teams were regularly sent to AFC and SAFF tournaments.

Aside from the calendar, the BFF made some commitments under the FIFA Forward Programme, which includes football festivals among different age-groups for both boys and girls as well as Elite Youth Development for U-14 to U-19 boys and girls. However nothing as such has appeared in the past one year, with only short training camps being arranged for age-group teams ahead of their participation in the SAFF Championships and AFC Championship Qualifiers.

Despite the short training camps, Bangladesh fared quite well in different age-group international tournaments to provide a glimpse of hope but unfortunately, there is no follow-up programme for any of those budding footballers.

Although Salahuddin could not implement the full programme mentioned in the calendar, there is still something that the BFF boss should be praised for and that is coaches' education.

The game's governing body conducted six certificate courses -- four AFC C License and one AFC B License Part-1 and AFC A License Part-1 -- for the coaches under Paul Smalley and the number of AFC C-Licensed coaches almost doubled just in the past year.

Out of the 95 coaches who took part in the four AFC C License courses, 84 passed which is remarkable considering that there were only 85 AFC C-Licensed coaches in the country in February 2017. 24 and 23 coaches completed the first part of AFC B and AFC A License courses respectively and are waiting for the second part to be conducted next year.