Understanding Bangladesh’s failure to find footballers despite large population

In football communities, it is often discussed how Bangladesh have failed to find and grow players to build a team that can bring success even after having a large population.

For comparison, the population of Bangladesh is about nine times greater than the population of Croatia, Uruguay and Portugal combined. While Uruguay itself has won two world cups, Bangladesh never came close to even qualifying for it.

So why have we failed to make use of such a large population to find players in our own countries and end up looking for Bangladeshi-origin footballers outside? If we compare our grassroots football with England's grassroots football, the answer is clear.

Mohammed (Mo) Chowdhury, who's an UEFA B candidate and youth coach in England, says, "There are many grassroots football clubs run by volunteers here, funded by the fees the Parents pay which cover hire of training facilities, insurance, league fees, etc. No profit is made."

He also added "Most, if not all, coaches are parents who would like to spend time with their child and see them enjoy and develop in football."

From this, we can see a combination of football culture and support from the authorities that ultimately leads to success.

The situation in Bangladesh however, is opposite of what's in England. Forget volunteer run clubs, there is no grassroots level league. Neither there is a system in place nor scouts, to find and grow young talents. Parents also never bother to get their child involved in football.

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Nishitangshu Datta, an AFC "C" Licensed Coach, says, "Football academies here are academies only by name. They lack basic facilities like a playing field, equipment and hostel and have no structure in place to function properly. Thus, a player rarely comes out of these academies that plays for the national team".

He added, "Many coaches here, especially in rural areas, don't know how to grow players in certain positions."

In many cases, they lack technical knowledge, stick with their outdated methods and they don't bother changing their ways to accommodate the proper growth of the player they are coaching.

In order to pursue a career in football, one has to move to Dhaka as competitive league football and trials for clubs mainly takes place here. If one fails in trials, they go back and have to travel again for next trials. Many can't afford the overall cost required to do all these continuously and ultimately gives up.

Again, if we look at popular European football clubs, they all have their own youth academies. None of the clubs here has that. The support from football clubs here to grassroots football is non-existent.

With no proper system in place at the grassroots level, lack of planning and football culture in the communities, the future of football in Bangladesh looks bleak. On top of that, the authority also isn't doing anything to make getting into football more accessible.

There's a saying that, "where there is a will, there is a way". Many small countries have shown it in football. For Bangladesh however, both the authority and the society seems to lack the will to achieve success in this sport.

Tamjidul Hoque likes to talk about football and checks his emails from time to time, you can contact him at: tamjidulh@gmail.com