Bangladesh national skipper Mamunul Islam urged everyone to stop the blame game for their disappointing display in the recently concluded Saff Championship in Nepal after facing the BFF Fact Finding Committee at the BFF House yesterday.
During their second day of investigation, the committee queried four national players - midfielder Mamunul Islam, striker Zahid Hasan Emily, defenders Waly Faisal and Atikur Rahman Meeshu. Captain Mamunul blamed luck and injury for their failure in the Saff campaign while Waly and Mishu questioned their new Dutch trainer Muhammet Yamali’s aptitude to train the national team.
“I want to request to Bangladesh Football Federation, coaches, officials and all football lovers to stop playing blame games. Bangladesh football would not improve unless we stop blaming each other. Whatever happened and whatever we lost is past now. We now have to start getting ourselves prepared for the next Saff Championship,” said Mamunul.
“The reasons behind our failure are firstly injury problem and secondly, bad luck. The team wasn’t strong enough due to injury of key players. I played with my injured leg. I gave my best to the team. I could have played the whole game, but if I had played it could be bad for national team because the team has to play with 10 men as I could only give my 50 percent,” he added.
However, veteran defender Waly Faisal slammed trainer Yamali as the reason behind some players’ injury.
“The players who are 80% fit, the trainer force him to give 100% during the practice session, more than the player can afford which is one of the reasons players get injured,” said Waly.
“I doubt the capability of our physical trainer. We didn’t see any variation in his training as he trained us the same thing for two months, but those were lengthy sessions. We had to train two times a day and as a result we didn’t have sufficient time to recover,” Waly continued.
The national team travelled to Nepal with few injured players in the squad. “It’s trainer’s job to inform the coach who is fit and who is not fit. There were players who travelled Nepal carrying injury problem,” said Mishu.
However, skipper Mamunul disagreed with Waly and Mishu. “There’s nothing the fitness coach could have done. Training is different in all teams and every trainer has different training style,” said the skipper.
Meanwhile, the players praised the quality of the head coach Lodewijk de Kruif and wanted him to stay for longer time for the betterment of the team.
