Can Cruciani take Bangladesh
soccer to expected height?
by Raihan Mahmood
Coaching any national football team is always a complicated as well as respectable job and it is not an exception with Bangladesh. Argentine coach Diego Andres Cruciani is set to take charge of the Bangladesh national football team within a few days to explore the new challenges.
Overseas coaches for Bangladesh football team are not a new phenomenon. Before Cruciani nine coaches had managed the national football team. Cruciani is the first Latin American to take up the job as his predecessors were either from Europe or Asia. He is taking the hot seat at a time when Bangladesh football has lost much of its charm and he will be under pressure if he fails to produce some good results and enhance the playing standards of the national squad.
Most of the previous coaches failed to achieve the target and fulfil the expectations. In 1978 when German coach Werner Beckelhauft arrived as the first foreign coach, Bangladesh football entered a new era. Beckelhauft did not coach the national team, he worked with the youth team only.
Another German Gerhard Schmidt was the first full-time foreign coach of Bangladesh and he was in charge of 1982 Delhi Asian Games football team. Bangladesh defeated Malaysia but lost to hosts India in the group phase and did not progress further.
Nasser Hejaji, the Iranian footballer who was very popular in Dhaka, took up the job in 1989 and under his guidance Bangladesh moved into the final of the of the SAF Games football in Pakistan. But the dream of winning the Gold medal remained unfulfilled as Bangladesh lost the final 0-1 against the hosts.
Oldrich Swab, the Swiss coach, was the writer of one of the most tragic tales of Bangladesh football history. In 1993 Bangladesh hosted the SAF Games and Swab was in charge of the football team. But Bangladesh even failed to qualify for the semi-finals.
Man Young Kang tried to insert some Korean flavour into Bangladesh football when became the national coach in 1995.
And Bangladesh again finished runners-up in the SAFF Gold Cup football tournament in Sri Lanka. He, however, did not continue very long as illustrious German Otto Pfister took over the rein.
Pfister fetched the first international silverware for Bangladesh winning the four-nation football title in Myanmar in 1995. But he also failed to cross the runners-up hurdle in 1995 as hosts India won the final of SAF Games in Madras. Pfister then took over as Saudi Arabia coach and under him the Saudis won a spot in the 1996 World Cup finals.
Samir Shakir, the Iraqi World Cup footballer who was also a popular figure in Dhaka, was the first successful foreign coach of the Bangladesh national team. He led the team to their dream title victory in the Nepal SAF Games in 1999. Samir quit the job after the triumph.
After Samir’s departure, Englishman George Harrison was given the charge, but mysteriously he was not interested in coaching Bangladesh and left the country after only two months.
Austrian George Kottan, who is now in Dhaka as the coach of Muktijoddha, guided Bangladesh to SAFF Football trophy triumph in 2003. Bangladesh played a good brand of football under him and were the deserved winners. After his departure for nearly two and a half years Bangladesh did not have any national coach. Cruciani will start the new era and of course a challenging time is waiting for him.
Isinbayeva the undisputed
queen of pole vault
Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva is the undisputed queen of women’s pole vault and this season became the first female to go over five metres.
But the 23-year-old from Volgograd has set her targets even higher and it would not come as a massive shock were the lissom Russian to use the world championships in Helsinki as the perfect place to exploit her supreme vaulting ability to even greater heights.
‘It was my dream and my goal to be the first woman over five metres. I’m so happy it’s a reality,’ she said after achieving that milestone at last month’s London Grand Prix meet.
‘I think I can make 5.50 metres,’ Isinibayeva said, adding however that she would settle just for the world title for the time being to add to the bronze medal she won at the last worlds in Paris in 2003.
Isinbayeva, upon whom the world’s track and field governing body the IAAF awarded its prestigious title of best female athlete in 2004, is now chasing men’s pole vault legend Sergei Bubka’s total of 35 world records.
‘I would like to have 36 world records. It’s my new goal,’ she said.
Already dubbed the ‘Sergei Bubka of the women’s polevault’, Isinbayeva took Olympic gold in Athens last year and has recorded numerous world records since.
In Athens, the Russian dominated the Olympic competition in only the second time it has been contested, defeating arch-rival Svetlana Feofanova before pursuing her personal battle with the record books.
Women were banned from pole vaulting until the mid-1990s but since its introduction the event has seen an unending pattern of progress.
With many of women’s track and field world records deep frozen in the Cold War era - the 400 metres mark of East Germany’s Marita Koch for example has stood for 19 years - Isinbayeva and Feofanova consistently serve up the record-chasing excitement that spectators want to see.
No money is paid for world records at the Olympics, but Isinbayeva has earned multiple 50,000-dollar bonuses for raising the bar at various athletics meets across the globe.
Add in bonuses from her shoe company and Isinbayeva, standing 1.74m tall and weighing 66 kilos, is no doubt already a wealthy young woman.
‘A yacht is what I will buy,’ she said after becoming Olympic champion. ‘Or a great car. I haven’t got a great car yet. But I am still waiting for my bonus so we will have to wait and see.’
This ebullient and most modern of Russians cuts a fascinating contrast with Feofanova, a quieter and sometimes dour character. It is rumoured the two are not the best of friends.
Isinabyeva took her first steps in sport as an artistic gymnast at the age of five but she failed to achieve success and a sudden growth spurt when she was 15 dashed her hopes of being a serious gymnast.
Bubka, a Ukrainian who still holds the men’s record of 6.14m, indirectly had a key role in her decision to switch from gymnastics to pole vaulting.
‘My coach predicted I could have a career like Bubka in the pole vault. But at that time I didn’t know who Bubka was.
‘Bubka told me he thought I was great after my victory in Donetsk (in 2004). After that I understood that I was really worth something.’
— AFP
England’s poor relations
put Serie A in shade
It’s about Millwall rather than Milan, Reading not Roma and Ipswich instead of Inter. Humble it may be but the rough and tumble of The Championship, English football’s second tier, is now officially more popular than Italy’s Serie A, traditionally the preserve of Europe’s silky soccer millionaires.
The 24-team league, which gives three sides each season access to the riches of the Premiership, witnessed a 10-percent increase in crowds in 2004/2005 to 9.8 million.
That made it the fourth most-watched division in Europe behind the Premiership (12.8 million), the German Bundesliga (11.57 million) and Spain’s La Liga (10.9 million) but, remarkably, ahead of Serie A.
It is also the sixth highest generator of revenue on the continent, according to Football League figures.
‘Young players are getting the opportunity to shine in The Championship,’ said England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson.
‘It is a competition that will continue to contribute a great deal to the England team. Players such as Michael Carrick, Andy Johnson and Shaun Wright-Phillips all starred in the league before going on to represent England.’
The profile of The Championship, which kicks off a new season on Saturday, is helped by the pulling power of some of the English game’s sleeping giants.
Leeds United boast a 40,000 capacity at their Elland Road ground while Wolves can squeeze almost 30,000 into their Molineux headquarters.
For their part, Southampton, who were relegated from the Premiership last season, can call upon England rugby union World Cup-winning coach Clive Woodward to work with their squad.
The attraction for The Championship, where the hurly-burly, high-speed nature of the game is in stark contrast to the slow-quick-slow approach of Serie A, isn’t hard to explain.
Promotion at the end of the season means life in the rarefied atmosphere of the Premiership.
The top two go up while the third promotion spot is through the nerve-shredding play-offs.
‘The play-off final can be worth 25-35 million pounds,’ said Stewart Regan, the director of The Championship.
‘It makes the game the single most valuable match to the winner in any sport in the world.’
Football League authorities make that claim based on the financial gap between the two divisions.
‘One of the stats which has been mentioned recently is that it would take a Championship club about 25 years to earn the same amount of money as the bottom club playing in the Premiership for one season,’ said Regan.
One way of curing the financial headache, believes Regan, is to use The Championship’s status to put pressure on European governing body UEFA to grant the winners a place in the Intertoto Cup.
‘We’ve been turned down before because we are a second tier competition,’ he admitted.
‘So I am saying to our clubs: ‘Let’s show how powerful The Championship is and then go back to UEFA.’
— AFP
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