MD ANWAR ULLAH:Asian football’s highest authority the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and its Member Associations (MA) have emphasized on agreeing in principle to find out the best way to kick off the all Asian clubs and international competitions.
The AFC had a meeting with all the members keen to complete the remaining matches of the Asian Champions League, AFC Cup and the Preliminary Joint Asian Qualifiers Round 2 as well as the centralized AFC U-16 and U-19 Championships and the AFC Futsal Championships.
Therefore, the AFC have been holding a series of online meetings with the MAs involved in the AFC Cup in 2020 to agree upon a format to successfully complete the competition this year.
Following a call on Tuesday, June 2, with the West Zone, there will be further discussions with South, Central, ASEAN and East this week.
The AFC have already had online meeting with the MAs, who have involvement with the AFC Champions League and all have underlined commitment to complete the 2020 club competitions.
Meanwhile, the AFC had another teleconference with the MAs on Friday to discuss about completing the AFC Cup matches and the Qatar World Cup and the Asian joint qualifiers round competitions.
Bangladesh, who have four matches left of the World Cup 2022 qualifiers to play, joined the meeting.
In their remaining four matches, Bangladesh will host India, Afghanistan and Oman and will play an away match against Qatar.
In the AFC Cup, Bashundhara Kings are representing Bangladesh and they also joined the Friday meeting to have guideline from AFC about their remaining five matches.
Bangladesh’s champions Bashundhara will play Chennai FC of India and Myzan of Maldives on home and away ground following the away match against TC Sports.
However, General Secretary of Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) Abu Nayeem Shohag said to The Independent that they had an online meeting with the AFC on Friday involving Bashundhara Kings, who are representing the country in the AFC Cup.
“A meeting was scheduled with the AFC to discuss about the AFC Cup and the joint qualifiers of Qatar World Cup and Asia Cup,” he said.
“In the meeting, there will not only be Bangladesh, but also some other nations, who have participation scheduled in the AFC Cup and WC 2022 and Asia Cup qualifying round matches. After the meeting we can have a guideline as to when the competitions would start. Upon receiving the AFC directions, we will set out programme with the national team and club teams,” said Shohag.
Imrul Hassan, President of the Bashundhara Kings, said, “Actually, we played only one and five matches left to play in the AFC Cup. So we did not release any of the foreign booters. But only Barcos of Argentina left after playing the first match just before the spread of Covid-19 in our country.”
“Now let’s see what sort of guideline comes from the AFC and then we will take our next steps,” he noted.The Independent
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