AKM Maruful Haque, the rising football coach of the country, submitted his appeal on Saturday in order to reconsider his one-year ban imposed by the Professional Football League Committee (PFLC) of the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) last month. Due to the harsh nature of the punishment, it seems like Maruf has fallen prey of a conspiracy and also a victim of dirty politics.
Former Sheikh Russel coach Maruf had criticised the PFLC and accused the committee of favouring the big clubs while scheduling the fixtures of the top flight. And according to the BFF’s disciplinary code, “Anyone who insults someone in any way, especially by using offensive gesture or language, will be sanctioned with a match suspension. If the perpetrator is an official, he will be suspended for at least four matches. A fine as well as a ban on performing any football-related activity, as referred to in Article 22, may also be pronounced.”
BFF general secretary Abu Naeem Shohag informed the appeal committee will now look into the issue. “We have received Maruful Haque’s appeal for withdrawing his suspension. We will refer this appeal to the Appeal Committee and they will take the final decision.”
However, the suspension dished out by the BFF categorically shows that certain quarters advocated a longer ban. Maruf’s 12-month suspension is indeed extreme and disproportionate to the offence he committed. Temperamental coaches like Jose Mourinho, the now retired Sir Alex Ferguson and Diego Siemone often paid fines for uncontrolled comments and are sometimes banned from the touchline but are never kept out of football.
Surprisingly the suspension notice was delivered when Maruf was attending the second part of his pro-license course in the United Kingdom. The ban was a laughing stock as almost all the local media reported that Maruf will be in the UK during that time. Maybe the BFF did not know that Maruf was not in the country when they handed out the suspension.
Apparently, a quarter of the federation and club officials were angry with Maruf as he was not in good terms with his former club Russel, who sacked him in the middle of last season. He then joined eventual champions Sheikh Jamal as the technical director.
With Joseph Afusi no more at the helm of Sheikh Jamal as a coach, Maruf was associated with the team as its technical director. Maruf was poised to take on the post of head coach at Sheikh Jamal and the rival club officials played a big role behind the suspension as they wanted to halt the progression in his coaching career. A number of senior coaches were reportedly said to teach him a lesson.
Dubbed as the future national coach for his fresh and methodical approach, Maruf’s one-year ban shows that a professional approach and attitude in Bangladesh football is still missing.