2017 In Review: A rollercoaster ride that was Bangladesh football

Bangladesh football kicked off 2017 with the national women's team reaching the final of the Saff Championship for the first time in history and concluded its annual calendar with the young unbeaten girls winning the Saff U-15 Championship. The year therefore, can easily be termed as the most eventful for Bangladesh women's football in recent times, especially in the youth level. The Bangladesh boys also provided promising hints of a bright future after some impressive performances in the regional and international competitions. But the year was also an uneventful one for the senior men's national team which passed off the calendar without a single international fixture. Thus, the men in red and green slumped to their lowest ever Fifa ranking at the end of the year. The club football scenario followed a similar pattern to that of the recent years with Dhaka giant Abahani Limited maintaining their sheer dominance in domestic tournaments.More achievements unlocked in women's footballSince its introduction in 2010, the Saff Women's Championship, as well as the South Asian Games have always been considered the most important tournaments for women's football in Bangladesh. But the women in red and green never managed to overcome the last-four stage until the fourth edition that got underway in the last week of 2016. Bangladesh reached the grand finale for the first time in style, thrashing Maldives 6-0 in the semi-final on January 2. They however, lost the final against neighbour India. The team were formed mostly with players from the youth team and U-16 striker Sirat Jahan Shopna played a crucial role, netting a hat-trick in the last four, and Bangladesh's lone goal in the final. The first week of the month hinted a colourful road up ahead for the young female footballers, who soon began their preparation for September's AFC U-16 Championship in Thailand, participated by Asia's top eight teams. The preparation required continuous practice opportunities and the BFF managed to arrange camps for the girls, both at home and abroad. The U-16 girls' team gained valuable experience touring a host of Asian countries for practice matches. They camped and played friendly games in Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. In the final round, Bangladesh girls got the chance to test their credential in the top level. They lost against two-time champion Japan and three-time winner North Korea before putting up a brave display against Australia, only to conclude their campaign with a 3-2 defeat. The experience in Thailand was worth the long wait as almost the same group of players concluded the year with an unbeaten campaign in the Saff U-15 Championship. This was the country's first ever regional title from any women's football team. Riding on the brilliant performances of a group of young and talented girls, the memorable year saw the national women's team break into the world's top 100 for the first time since the introduction of the Fifa ranking.A year of transition, hope in men's footballOne would find it extremely difficult to remember another year with absolutely no international match for the Bangladesh men's team. But it was confirmed by the BFF officials that it hasn't happened at least in the last decade or so. The absence of playing opportunities saw the national team slip to their worst ever Fifa ranking of 197th. Most of the players in the current Bangladesh squad now are near or over 30 years of age. The shambolic Bhutan defeat in 2016, followed by a series of soulless performances were the dawning period for a generation of footballers, and it demanded more attention for the development of the players in the pipeline, which has always been neglected by the football federation. Worryingly, the sad trend still persists now. The BFF, with double the financial support from world football's governing body, under the presidency of Gianni Infantino, than the previous years, tried to give importance to youth development in their four-year master plan. But the outcomes were not satisfactory while most of the Bangladesh Premier League clubs continue to show lack of interest in forming a youth team for the U-18 tournament, citing financial limitation. Bangladesh U-18 side exhibited promising display in the Saff U-18 Championship in Bhutan's capital Thimphu in the second half of September where they won three matches and lost one against champion Nepal to finish as the runners-up. Youngster Jafar Iqbal showed immense talent, netting five goals to become the tournament's undisputed top-scorer. The previous month, in late August, young forward Foysal Ahmed Fahim, midfielder Miraj Molla and defender Yeasin Arafat also proved their potential in the Saff U-15 Championship in Nepal where the Bangladesh boys finished third, scoring the most number of goals (17) in four games. Fahim ended as the tournament's highest-scorer as well, bagging six goals. These U-15 boys also surprised all and sundry when they handed a 2-0 defeat to host Qatar in the AFC U-16 Championship Qualifiers in September. Three months have since elapsed but no permanent settlement has yet been provided to the talented boys, nor continuous training or playing opportunities. Fahim is an exception in that he was signed by the newly formed Saif Sporting Club. If the football federation provides long-term training camps to these boys, like they are doing with the Bangladesh girls, the future national team will only get benefited.Sky Blues retain authority in domestic footballAfter getting back to the driving seat of domestic football in 2016, following a five-year trophy drought, the traditional powerhouse Abahani continued their dominance in the professional tournaments in 2017 as well. Despite losing half of their key players from the 2016 squad, the Dhanmondi giant managed to retain the season opening Federation Cup after going through an unbeaten campaign. And despite the departure of experienced Serbia-born Croatia head coach Drago Mamic during the halfway stage of the league, the Sky Blues showed brilliant transformation in the second phase to return to the top of the points table courtesy a nine-match winning streak, which extended to the new year, ensuring their sixth professional league title in 10 attempts, that too with a game in hand. The Bangladesh Premier League champion however, failed to impress in the AFC Cup after losing key players before the start of Asia's second-tier league, quite similar to the Uefa Europa League. The professional football league committee decided to run the top-flight league reducing the quota of foreign players from three to two in the playing XI but it did little to help the local forwards get more attention as most of the clubs continued to design their attacking line-ups with a pair of foreign strikers. Despite being lesser in number, a total of 33 foreign players scored around 60% of the total goals in more than 100 premier league matches in 2017. Towhidul Alam Sabuj, the Chittagong Abahani Limited forward, is the only Bangladesh player to get into the top 10 goal-scorer's list at the end of the league campaign. National strikers who represented Bangladesh in the last few years surrendered to optimum fitness and spent a dull season with Shakhawat Hossain Rony of Chittagong Abahani and Jahid Hasan Ameli of Mohammedan Sporting Cup Limited ploughing a lonely furrow upfront throughout the year. Lt. Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club forwards Raphael Odoyin of Nigeria and Solomon King of Gambia scored a combined 29 goals in 21 matches. Sadly, no other club except Abahani managed to score more than this attacking pair. Nigerian striker Sunday Chizoba, who was the league's top-scorer last season, played a crucial role in Abahani's late transformation, despite missing the first phase due to injury. Feni Soccer Club were relegated to the Bangladesh Championship League in the previous season and the owner of the same club formed another side, Nofel Sporting Club, at the beginning of 2017 which directly played in the second-tier and finished runners-up to get promoted to the top-tier league, along with the other recently-formed club, Bashundhara Kings.Did you know?Bangladesh men’s football team did not play a single international fixture in 2017. BPL champion: Abahani LimitedRunners-up: Lt. Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi ClubRelegated: Feni Soccer ClubPromoted: Nofel Sporting Club and Bashundhara KingsFederation Cup champion: AbahaniRunners-up: Chittagong Abahani Limited