Bangladesh participation in SAFF championship 2011 is under doubt regarding VISA Wrangle

The departure date of the Bangladesh national football team for India to take part in the SAFF Championship is still uncertain after the national side ran into visa complications.

 Vice president of Bangladesh Football Association has given the indication that Bangladesh might have to withdraw from the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship, if the Indian Visa complications are not resolved. Five of the thirty-member contingent for the Games, including head coach Nikola Ilievski and assistant Shamsuzzaman Yousuf had not been granted visas till yesterday, forcing the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) to cancel their planned tour of Kolkata where they were scheduled to play a practice match against Southern Samity.

“We are thinking of leaving here for New Delhi on Tuesday but we will have to think about alternatives if the complications regarding visas are not solved before our scheduled departure,” said Badal Roy.

“But it is confirmed that the Bangladesh team will not leave the country without a single member of the contingent as it is a team game and no one will remain outside of the team,” opined the BFF vice-president.

The Bangladesh national team was originally scheduled to leave for Kolkata on Friday before moving on to New Delhi for the main competition which will get underway from December 2. But on Thursday, only 25 of the 30 member contingent who applied were granted visas with the rest turned down to a lack of documentation. BFF rescheduled the plan and fixed yesterday afternoon as the revised date of departure hoping that the visa issue would be solved by then.

However, they were not able to get the visas on time and had to cancel the whole Kolkata tour.

“On Thursday, the Indian High Commission asked us to make corrections on those five applications online but we could not manage to get any appointment for the last three days despite repeated efforts and today (Sunday), we tried to meet with the visa officials but they did not want to meet without appointments,” said Jaber bin Taher Al Ansari, BFF assistant manager for the competition.


According to the newspaper ‘the daily star’ the Bangladeshi players’ morale has been low after the visa fiasco.