Hijacking success, chasing clout

The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) seems to have mastered the art of spoiling its own party every time it achieves something substantial. It has this uncanny knack of producing moments of controversy just when the whole nation is looking towards it with great anticipation.

As the nation was celebrating the latest achievement of its indomitable girls in the form of the SAFF U-20 Women's Championship triumph on Thursday night, a sorry episode was unraveling right in front of the media while the team was busy celebrating. One of the most important architects of the success was left in the lurch – deprived of the winner's medal – for he had become one too many in that group dominated by privileged officials.

Masud Ahmed Ujjol, the goalkeeping coach of the team, was spotted leaving the pitch bemused and sad when his name did not come up on the list of medal winners, instead there were names of two team leaders and two assistant team leaders on the list to receive medals from the podium. It is hard to find logic in deeming those four officials more fitting for a medal than the one whose protege had just received the best goalkeeper award.

No matter how humiliating this latest saga is for the coaching staff and the team members, it should not actually come as a surprise to them at all. They have had the taste of it before.

Remember what happened when Bangladesh won the SAFF Women's Championship for the first time just five months ago? The first pictures and footages you saw on media, with garlands around their necks after the plane touched down from Nepal, were of those club officials and BFF members who barely had any contribution to women's football. And then when the much-anticipated press briefing took place at the BFF House, the front seats were all occupied by the same people, hardly leaving any room for the coaches and the players.

The BFF and its archaic members do not seem to learn from past mistakes and misdemeanours. The one thing that they are good at is hijacking someone's success so that they could have their faces splashed across the newspapers and TV screens and have photographs of their 'achievements' hung on the walls of their offices. And then use these 'achievements' to further their agendas and wield their clout on the corridors of power.

You will not find these bandwagoners – most of whom are associated with sporting clubs in Dhaka – when you need them for forming teams for the women's league. But you will find them as part of the delegation when the national team is playing in a SAFF Championship, because they know there is a high probability of success and, with that, their chance to be in the limelight.

In fact, women's football has become a publicity tool for not just BFF members, but the federation itself. Devoid of any sort of success with the men's team for more than a decade, the BFF is trying to use the regional success of women to make itself a bit more appealing to common people and sponsors. These uncouth incidents, however, are hardly helping its image or whatever is left of it.

One can rest assured that many of these people will not be found anywhere near the team when they are up against much stronger opponents outside of the South Asian region. They know the model of women's football in Bangladesh is a short-sighted one, good enough to succeed at regional level for a time period, but destined for failure when it comes to sustainability against a bigger pool of competitors.

Moreover, short-sightedness is a systemic disease that eternally ails the country's football governing body. The BFF was myopic when it handed former coach Jamie Day a two-year extension despite a downward spiral in results, and then it turned completely blind when it sacked the coach midway through the contract. Afterwards, they slept through an 86,000-dollar fine by the FIFA, so much so that it has yet failed to clear a penny of the fine even a month-and-a-half after the deadline passed.

This is not the first time this sort of fines were imposed and, rest assured, it will not be the last because the BFF officials had claimed on becoming wiser from their previous experience.

And now that they are facing a bigger sanction from the world football's governing body, the BFF officials helplessly claim that they do not have the money to pay the fine. At the same breath, however, they boast of inviting reigning men's world champions for a friendly match for a jaw-dropping sum of money.

These contradictions in their statements and actions, the deprivation of the deserving and the penchant for going for the extravagant while overlooking the basic demands – all of these point to a governing body which is morally decrepit, thoroughly unprofessional and full of people serving personal agendas rather than the national interest.