Bangladesh: Super Cup to start Bangladesh football season

The new football season will get underway in November and this time it will start with the holding of the money-spinning Super Cup instead of Federation Cup, the traditional curtain-raising tournament.
The third edition of one-crore-taka Super Cup was originally scheduled to begin this month, but the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) decided to shift it to November as a busy national and international calendar coincided with this period.

Bangladesh have two international friendlies against India and Pakistan in England in June. Then they prepare for the SAFF Championship which will be held in September in Nepal. After that an international tournament is also scheduled to be held here in Dhaka in October.

The lucrative Super Cup was first held in 2008, but the second edition was held in 2011 following a brief stoppage.

“We can’t stage it [Super Cup] due to the international friendlies, the preparations for and participation of the SAFF Championship and an international tournament on home soil,” said BFF president Kazi Salahuddin, who arrived here on Saturday after attending the AFC Congress in Malaysia, yesterday.

“I would like to say that the Super Cup will take place in November rather than saying the next season and I believe the participating clubs will be benefited financially through this tournament at the start of the season.”

Meanwhile, Mohammedan SC are not interested to play the Super Cup this season while three-time champions Sheikh Russel KC’s president Nurul Alam Chowdhury said that they would not be able to participate if the tournament was not held this month.

And about the future of traditional curtain-raising Federation Cup, the BFF chief said that they were determined to stage three tournaments including the Federation Cup and the professional football league in a season.

Meanwhile, the game’s local governing body has already failed to meet the deadline of February’s JFA U-14 Cup and March-April’s Champions Club Cup. JFA Cup was supposed to comprise district teams while the Champions Club Cup was supposed to be consisted of the district league champions.