–Ekramuzzaman–

Clubs serve as the guardians of football culture around the world. The contributions of football clubs have always been valued for their role in consistently producing players, nurturing new talents and popularising the game. Clubs develop players and provide opportunities for national teams to access top talents. Football players do not acquire all the skills of the sport naturally. They have to develop those through hard work. And the clubs help them to accomplish this task by providing them with planned training under their guardianship. In professional football, this is the responsibility of the clubs.

Bashundhara Kings, a popular football club in the country backed by Bashundhara Group, is going to initiate a six-month long football training programme with a view to producing a bunch of good players in the country for future. Officially set to begin on 4 October, the non-residential training programme will train players of three different age groups (6-11, 11-15, and 15-18). Each session will last for six months while the practice will take place three days a week. The motto of the Bashundhara Kings Football Academy is “Today’s football is tomorrow’s profession”.

In the football arena, activities of some world-famous football academies like Manchester United, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Arsenal, Man City etc. have been well known, and they have set many excellent examples for others to emulate. In Bangladesh, the clubs have never taken any initiative to nurture footballers from their “entry level”. So, the local players of the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) have usually been the only option for those who select players. So, the country’s football could not flourish very well.

Bashundhara Kings’ arrival in the county’s football arena has been very meaningful. The club has brought about a positive change in the game as it has evolved with time. With specific goals, objectives and aspirations, the club has been able to make its name known not only in Bangladesh but also in South Asian nations and beyond. In domestic professional football, Bashundhara Kings have broken all previous records in terms of success and created a new history and has established itself as an acceptable brand in the sports arena.

Bashundhara Kings was established in 2016. In 2017, Bashundhara Group nominated Md Imrul Hassan as the club’s President. Since then, he has been carrying out his duties with accountability and professionalism. One day I was talking about football with Imrul Hassan. He said, “We became champion in the Bangladesh Championship League then and were thinking of forming a team for the professional league. One day, the chairman asked me, ‘Will people come to watch the game if we form a team’. I replied that we had to do something new.”’

“If you can form a team with footballers playing in the World Cup and quality players of the country, people will return to the gallery again’. The chairman gave the green signal to proceed and all witnessed history later on.” The club’s president shared another story with me. “We would play in the Bangladesh Premier League at the moment. One day, I approached the chairman with apprehension and proposed to him that seven to eight Bighas of land would be enough for a practice ground,” Imrul Hassan said.

“Thanks to his interest and enthusiasm, it became a field of 50 Bighas, which finally turned into a 300-Bigha Multi Sports Complex. Various sports can be arranged in the same place. Indeed, the future is here,” he added. On 17 February 2022, Ahmed Akbar Sobhan inaugurated Bashundhara Kings’ own venue Bashundhara Kings Arena as the first professional club in the country.

After the official opening of the arena, the chairman of Bashundhara Group told the media, “We are going to establish an indoor academy and will try to take the franchise from Manchester United. Besides, many clubs in Europe have expressed interest in becoming a franchise.”

He added, “Hopefully international football matches will be held at the King’s Arena within a year. Apart from this, we hope that by the third quarter of 2024, King’s Academy activities, if not residential, would be possible through non-residential age-based group training.”

As promised, the first international football match between Bangladesh and Afghanistan was held at the Bashundhara Kings Arena on 3 September 2023. Nine international matches were held in this venue till 6 June 2024. And the professional training programme of three different age groups is also going to take place here.

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The writer is a former senior vice-president of International Sports Press Association (AIPS) Asia