Md Anwar Ullah: Two FIFA friendly football matches will take place between Bangladesh and Nepal on November 13 and 17 in Dhaka when the football fans as well as the national team booters will enthuse over the rolling of the football to the ground after a long hiatus.
Bangladesh national football team will return to international circuit right after one year provided COVID-19 situation will not deteriorate further and everything will go in accordance with the plans.
Bangladesh played their last international match on October 15, 2019 against India in one of their FIFA World Cup 2022 qualifiers following the postponement of all the scheduled matches due to global outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
After a long break of seven to eight months, European countries started their domestic league and international competitions. Besides, Latin America also started different competitions including FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
Following the green signal from FIFA and AFC, the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) planned to organize couple of friendly matches against Nepal. It would be a great relief for the national booters as they have been desperately waiting to kick off their outfield activities.
Meanwhile, FIFA and AFC took initiatives to restart their qualifiers and also made fresh schedules to hold the matches in October and November after seven months of halt due to the spreading out the COVID-19 pandemic all over the world.
In line with the FIFA and AFC revived fixtures, BFF also called on the national team’s camp in August but due to flight restriction for coronavirus the governing body of world football FIFA and the Asian football authority AFC were again forced to postpone the schedules and deferred to 2021. The camp of the Bangladesh national team was also called off.
However, considering the overall situation, BFF arranged two FIFA friendly matches against Nepal scheduled to take place on November 13 and 17.
BFF General Secretary Abu Nayeem Shohag informed the Independent on Monday that all are set to host Nepal for the friendly affairs and now they are just waiting to know the flight schedule of the visiting team.
“After having the consent from All Nepal Football Association (ANFA), we have made almost all preparations to start the practice of our team from October 23 and also to bring back the head coach Jamie Day and his deputies from England by 28 October,” Shohag said.
“We are looking forward towards Nepal team’s flight schedule as far I know they will come with a chartered flight and we will have to arrange at least seven days of quarantine after their arrival. The tentative date of Nepal team to land here is on November 3 and we are yet to have confirmation.”
“About crowds, FIFA provided three tiers of instructions, ‘No, Full and Limited’. We will follow third one. We will keep the crowds limited. Our plan is to organize the matches at the Bangabandhu National Stadium (BNS),” Shohag replied to a query.UNB