With the elections of Bangladesh Football Federation set on April 30, Kazi Salahuddin, who is seeking his third term as president, spoke to New Age’s Sudipta Ananda at length in a recent interview. Here are the excerpts:
Kazi Salahuddin
Q: You are seeking a third term as Bangladesh Football Federation president. How satisfying your first two terms were?
Kazi Salahuddin: When I became president in 2008, there was no football in Dhaka – no league, no tournament. Same situation was with the district football. The need of the hour was ensuring regular football. The current deputy minister for youth and sports, Arif Khan Joy, along with the footballers protested in front of the BFF House demanding for regular football. After being elected as the president, I regularised professional football, which was one of my biggest achievements in the last eight years. I know that some people told in TV talk shows that I failed to run football at the district level. I just want to clarify that a total of 47 districts staged their leagues regularly during my term. Despite lot of impediments, football did not stop rolling. Now Independence Cup is going on. We also hosted the AFC Cup match between Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club and Tampine Rovers of Singapore despite being busy with the BFF elections. That all indicate that BFF is running under a system.
Q: In 2012 you announced a progamme called Vision 2022. But we saw a little headway in this regard. Can you explain?
Salahuddin: Look, without any vision it’s not possible to achieve anything. For example, China wants to become a footballing power by 2050 and for that they are spending millions of dollars. So, it takes time to fulfill a dream. Now most of the districts are running their leagues. If I get elected again, I will take football to every district. So, I need one last chance to fulfill my target.
Q: Your opponents are saying that you are not as good as an organiser as good as you were a footballer…
Salahuddin: My football life is an open book. Everybody knows what I am and how passionate I am about the game. I fought for the country and my weapon was none other than football. And I will fight for the improvement of the game till my death. Nowadays a player earns Tk 40 to 50 lakh from domestic football, two or three times bigger than a cricketer earns. How it has become possible? Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club, who took position against me, came to football only because of me.
Q: Are you fully satisfied with your works as saw Bangladesh made little progress internationally?
Salahuddin: I would have been more satisfied if my national team had performed better. But I don’t want to blame my players as few clubs often used them at their whim. We see a top club forced the players to leave the national camp before an important match of World Cup qualifiers. The performances of the national team deteriorated in the last three months ahead of the elections. Until the chaos, the team was doing fine. In the last three years, the national team played a vast number of international matches. Some former players criticised me for not arranging international matches. I just want to say that they didn’t even play those number of matches in their whole career, what the national team played in the last two or three years.
Q: What is you promise for the delegates if you are re-elected?
Salahuddin: Look, the money FIFA and AFC provide us, is not enough to run the game properly. I tried my level best to arrange money to run football across the country. You know, I hired a person to run the district football, but he failed to do that and now he is blaming me. If I get re-elected, I will bring a person, who is very familiar with the game and devoted for the improvement of district football. I will form a committee that will go to all the districts and rural organisers to give them financial and technical assistance to produce new talents.
Q: It seems you failed to run a full-fledged football academy. What is your comment on that?
Salahuddin: The academy [Sylhet Academy] is fully ready now. After its opening, it had to be closed at the instruction of a FIFA technical staff. He said we will not get any result by running the academy with the local coaches. It is totally a waste of money and waste of time. FIFA advised me to bring foreign technical staff for the academy. After that, I contacted with some developed nations like Japan and Korea. And the good thing is that, I have found a sponsor, who showed their interest to finance the academy. But they wanted to be associated with it for minimum 10 years. We need time to make a decision. I am discussing the matter with the ministry. Once I get their approval, we will resume the academy.
Q: Recently you expressed your concerns over the security of the delegates. Is there any chance of cancelling the Saturday’s elections?
Salahuddin: I hope it will not happen because I have full faith on my delegates. I hope they will cast their votes in a smooth and secured way but it’s also true that some delegates expressed their concern over the security as they were threatened by a group of people. I personally also got threats from certain individuals who asked me not to take part in the elections. But I am not going to give up without a fight. It took me almost 40 years to reach in this position. I did not come here without any background. Moreover, I am not the right authority to say the fate of the elections because the BFF is an affiliated body of FIFA and AFC. They are prime authorities to decide the fate of the elections.
Q: How do you rate you opponent Kamrul Ashraf Khan Poton?
Salahuddin: Personally I don’t like to tell anything about him. I just want to say one thing that, I spent 40 long years to reach in this position. Now, if anyone wants to become the president, who doesn’t have any sporting background and who announced his interest just 10 days ago I don’t have anything to say. I just want to wish him all the best. He told that I failed to bring financers in my terms. I just want to say him that if I failed, how the game is running regularly and how the national team played 10 or 15 international matches every year and how we bore the huge expenses of foreign coaches. I think all of his allegations are baseless.
Source: New Age
