The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has finally got itself actively involved with the Bangabandhu and Bangamata Gold Cup Primary School Football Tournaments by providing training to coaches and teachers of those schools which have qualified for the final rounds.

Though the Bangabandhu and the Bangamata Gold Cup, which involved around 65 thousand primary schools, started in 2010 and 2011 respectively, this is the first time that the game's governing body got itself involved, thanks to the success of age-level women's teams in international tournaments.

Some 28 coaches and teachers from 14 schools – seven schools each for boys' and girls' tournaments – were given a three-day training at the BFF House. The course concluded yesterday with the hope that the standard of the footballers would gradually improve.

“Although I have an AFC C license certificate, I have learnt new things from this training course,” claimed Golam Raihan Bapon, a teacher of Suti BM High School of Tangail and mentor of the U-16 women's team captain Krishna Rani Sarker.

“We train the girls with our acquired knowledge but we have learnt new things such as techniques, tactics and basic stuff of football. I don't know whether it will help the girls in the final rounds due to shortage of time but I believe it will help me a lot to teach the girls in future,” said ATM Masud Ahmed, head coach of Syed Arjumand Ali Primary School of Sylhet.

Primary and Mass Education secretary Mohammad Asif-Uz-Zaman, additional secretary Nazrul Islam Khan, BFF members Fazlur Rahman Babul and Satyajit Das Rupu and technical director BA Jubair Nipu were, among others, present on the occasion.