The National Sports Council (NSC) and the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) jointly inspected the newly rebuilt ground of the Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday and found some problems with the newly laid drainage system. This means that the handover of the ground will be delayed by a few more weeks.
Nearly Tk 4.5 crore was spent by the NSC to fix up the pitch. It now has auto showers that wet the pitch before games begin.
Instead of pop-up sprinklers, which are used all over the world on football fields, the NSC put in old-fashioned spray guns that are usually found on manmade hockey fields. The BFF spoke out against the six water guns, saying that they could hurt football players.
BFF also says that the concrete structure of the sports grass and the small water tank for making the ground wet were both seen as safety concerns by the game’s local governing body. During the joint check, the BFF also found that the changing rooms for local games didn’t have enough seats.
“We don’t have enough fields, and the blockade makes it hard to set up Independence Cup games outside of Dhaka.” “Some games have been moved to other venues and some have been rescheduled,” BFF vice-president Ataur Rahman Bhuiyan Manik said yesterday after inspecting the arena with NSC director (planning and development) Shamsul Islam.
We didn’t find any complicated problems, but we did find a danger to the players: things like the RCC concrete of the track and water pumps that don’t meet FIFA or AFC standards can hurt the players. “We asked them to fix these problems with ones that meet world standards or FIFA/AFC standards,” Manik told reporters.
Shamsul Islam, the head of the NSC, said that he had asked the BFF to list its needs two or three months ago, but the BFF had not replied.
“The renovation is very important to me, and I go to the site two or three times a week.” We could have fixed this problem sooner if they had asked the questions they are asking now. “These things weren’t finished today or two months ago; they were finished a long time ago,” Shamsul said, adding that it would take another month to fix these problems.
The renovations began in September 2021, and the ground was meant to be turned over to the football league in December of this year. However, the NSC is trying to turn it over early because the sports ministry told them to.
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