With lower-level competitions such as school tournaments and national age-group tournaments having been absent for a long time, the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has taken the initiative to hold the BFF Academy U-15 Championship, which will include residential and non-residential football academies from across the country.
Thanks to financing from FIFA’s talent development system, 169 academies authorised under the BFF Academy system will compete in the competition for the first time.
With no football activity in most regions, a plethora of football academies, the majority of which are non-residential, have played an important role in creating players from the outskirts. The game’s local regulatory body brought them together in 2021 by recognising 196 academies with certified coaches under the BFF Academy Accreditation Scheme.
Most of those academies have now been given a platform to compete in this event, from which the BFF will select talented players for its Elite Academy, effectively ending the traditional talent hunt scheme.
“The BFF Academy Championship is the result of a lot of hard work.” We have been concerned with finding talented players since the formation of the BFF development committee. “We have already started the BFF Elite Academy where you can find some positive things,” BFF development committee chairman Ataur Rahman Bhuiyan Manik said today at a news conference, adding that they received more than one crore taka from the FIFA talent development programme for championship.
Starting on December 19, the 169 participating academies will play round-robin matches before the champions of each zone proceed to the second round. The zonal winners will be able to recruit players from other zone academies in order to strengthen their squad and make room for talented players.
Following the knockout-style 24-team second round, 12 teams will advance to the finals, where they will be separated into four groups and play round-robin matches before the semifinals and finals are held at a neutral venue.