Academy footballers set to get competitive platform

With lower-level competitions like school tournament, national age-group tournament being absent for a long time, Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has taken an initiative to hold BFF Academy U-15 Championship with participation of residential and non-residential football academies across the country.

A total of 169 academies, which are accredited under the BFF Academy Scheme, will take part in the tournament for the first time, thanks to funding from FIFA talent development scheme.

With no football activities in most of districts, a lot of football academies, most of them non-residential, have been playing a crucial role in producing players from the periphery. The game's local governing body brought them under a roof in 2021 by giving some 196 academies, which have certified coaches, recognitions under BFF Academy Accreditation Scheme.

Now, most of those academies have been given a platform to participate in this tournament, from where the BFF will pick talented players for its Elite Academy, and dissolve the conventional talent hunt programme.

"The BFF Academy Championship is an outcome of hard work. From the start of BFF development committee, we have been thoughtful about finding talented players. We have already started the BFF Elite Academy where you can find some positive things," BFF's development committee chairman Ataur Rahman Bhuiyan Manik said at a press conference today, adding that they got more than one crore taka from the FIFA talent development scheme for championship.

The 169 participating academies, split into 24 zones, will play round-robin matches starting from December 19 before the champions of each zone advance to the second round. The zonal champions will be eligible to rope in players from other zonal academies to strengthen their squad as well as create room for talented players.

After the knockout basis 24-team second round, 12 teams will advance to the finals where they will again be divided into four groups and play round-robin matches before the semifinals and final take place at a neutral venue.