Lack of football dev't in S.Asia due to politics: fmr. Bangladesh Federation employee

A former employee of the Bangladesh Football Federation has said that the lack of development in football in South Asian countries is due to the involvement of politicians in the field of sport.

Ahmed Sayed Al Fatah, who was Media and Communications Manager of the Federation from 2005 to 2011, says that those who run South Asia's organisations do not wish to take advice from either FIFA or the Asian Football Confederation when it comes to developing the game.

Lack of vision and growth

Ahmed Sayed al-Fatah, FIFA Regional
Instructor for Football Administration
and Management
Reproduced with permission

"Football leaders don’t know the way to develop but know only to run the current activities with no vision for the future," says Ahmed, who is now running his own football academy.

"They don’t want to take advice from FIFA or the AFC Because the committees are elected for four years and the election is full of corruption, so it is people below standard who run football. 

"Most of them don’t understand the FIFA and AFC-directed future plans," adds the 33-year-old, who also worked with FIFA as Regional Instructor for Football Administration & Management alongside his job at the BFF. 

During his time with FIFA, Fatah, 33, conducted FIFA-approved courses is India, the Maldives, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, in addition to his native Bangladesh.

"It had no growth, no job safety, no provident fund, bad management, low salary, bad working environment, no plans, no vision, nothing," says Fatah, referring to his job at the BFF.

Lacking ideas

Former Indian footballer Baichung Bhutia
Image courtesy Ritwik Bose

These words were echoed by former Indian football star Baichung Bhutia, who had stint with English team Bury FC.

“The right people, right professionals need to enter Federations. Right now they are lacking ideas," he was quoted as saying on Goal.com.

Kalyan Chaubey, the academy head of Indian football club Mohun Bagan, agrees with him. 

"I think a lack of international matches [is] a problem and our neighbouring countries Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan are not strong enough, so we are not getting competitive matches," Chaubey told CNN.

"[But] the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has restructured their administration and recently money has been pouring into the game, so more windows of opportunity are opening up."

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