It seems that everyone’s eyes are on Hamza Chowdhury. Since he stepped foot in Sylhet, Bangladesh yesterday, all the eyes of the country’s football are on him. Behind the madness of Hamza, another news has been buried. Bangladesh has returned from Saudi Arabia after playing only one warm-up match.
The Bangladesh team went to Saudi Arabia for a two-week special camp. The plan was to play three warm-up matches. Bangladesh was especially looking forward to Sudan. Since Sudan was unable to play due to internal reasons, there was a plan to play two matches against two local clubs in Saudi Arabia. In the end, Bangladesh returned home after playing one match.
Although Bangladesh’s preparation was not complete, coach Javier Cabrera said in his last message from Saudi before returning to Dhaka, “The almost two-week camp in Saudi Arabia has been very good.”
Bangladesh team manager Amer Khan later said about the reason for not playing another match, “Considering the possibility of players getting injured and a few other factors, coach decided to play a match among themselves in the end rather than playing with a Saudi club.”
The Bangladesh team arrived in Dhaka from Taif, Saudi Arabia this morning. Italian expatriate footballer Fahmidul camped in Taif for a week but did not return to Dhaka. Fahmidul joined the camp from Italy on March 9. He also played a practice match. He returned to Italy immediately after.
Bangladeshi football has developed a culture of traveling to Saudi Arabia for the past three years. The national football team’s Spanish coach Javier Cabrera is conducting a conditioning camp in Saudi Arabia for the three consecutive years in the March window of FIFA 2023-2025. Although the country’s Football Federation is bearing the cost of accommodation, food, and internal travel, the BFF’s flight and ancillary expenses for the three trips are close to crores of taka.
Despite spending so much money, the camps in Saudi Arabia have not yielded any results in real terms for the past two years. Whether there will be any different results this time remains to be seen.
