Thomas Dooley new Head Coach of Bangladesh Football team
After ending long speculation, former German-born American footballer Thomas Dooley has taken charge as the new Head Coach of the Bangladesh National Football team.
The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) officially announced this information on its official Facebook page on Friday morning.
The 65-year-old high-profile coach arrived in the capital Dhaka last morning after taking charge.
According to BFF sources, if everything goes well, Thomas Dooley will join the Bangladesh National Football team’s training camp on Sunday. He replaces outgoing coach Javier Cabrera.
There has been a lot of discussion in the sports portion of Bangladesh about who will be the new coach since Cabrera’s term ended.
Finally, the BFF handed over the Bangladesh Football team’s responsibility to Thomas Dooley just two weeks before the friendly match against San Marino.
Thomas Dooley’s career as a player was very colourful. The son of a father who served in the US Army and a German mother, Dooley played 81 matches for the US National Football team from 1992 to 1999 and scored 7 goals.
He participated in the 1994 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, captaining the United States in 1998. During his club career, he played for prominent German clubs such as Bayer Leverkusen and FC Schalke.
He also won the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League) with Schalke in 1997 and the Bundesliga title with FC Kaiserslautern in 1990-91.
Dooley, who entered the coaching profession in 2002, worked as an assistant coach with Jürgen Klinsmann of the United States National Football team from 2011 to 2014.
However, his greatest success as a head coach came in the Philippines.
Under his coaching, the Philippines qualified for the main stage of the AFC Asian Cup without defeat from 2014 to 2018 and achieved their highest ever ranking.
He was most recently in charge of the Guyana National Football team until 2025, where the team won four consecutive matches under his supervision.
Dooley will make his debut as Bangladesh coach in a friendly match against European country San Marino on June 5. This will be Bangladesh’s first international match against a European country.
BFF said Dooley has a deep understanding of the realities of Asian football and the passion of the fans. His main challenge will be to make the Bangladesh team more competitive and successful at the international level by harnessing the potential of young players.
