Readers’ Forum

Take lessons from Brazil

Football is the most popular sport in the world. More than 207 countries are now members of FIFA and they play football round the year apart from taking part in the respective continental championship, the Olympic Football, the age- group football and the World Cup once in every four years.
A victory is the outcome of spacious and that is why the football federations of almost all the countries do everything to achieve success. But in our case, it is different. Neither the Bangladesh Football Federation nor the footballers have any motivation. The federation officials and the footballers do not feel ashamed of their poor performance and lamentable results. They, like the political leaders, feel much comfortable to show us dream only or make long promises but always shy to be practical.
We have not heard any federation, nor the sports ministry officials to issue statement after shocking loss to Bhutan in the AFC qualification play-off match on October 11. The reasons of defeat were lack of motivation and physical fitness.
After Brazil’s extremely poor performance in the World Cup Football 2014 at home, the CBF sacked coach Dunga and appointed Rogerio Micale as new coach. The new coach brought drastic reforms in the team and got success winning the gold medal in the Olympic Football for the first time two years later. In both the cases, the rivals were Germany.
There are lessons for us in the Brazil’s Olympic victory. But the tragedy is – we hardly take lessons from mistakes.

Abdullah Akber
Dhaka