With less than a week to go for the President Gold Cup football tournament, the Bangladesh Football Federation Is still a little apprehensive about the venue for this international football meet. The traditional tug of war between the cricket and football supremos over the possession of the hallowed turf of the Dhaka Stadium — the apple of everyone's eyes for obvious reasons — has cast shadows over this tournament • iW

Although the BFF appeared to have succeeded in convincing the National Sports Council, sole authority of playing grounds in the country, the letter directed to the NSC by A S M Mustafizur Rahman. Foreign Minister and the president of the Bangladesh Cricket Control Board (BCCB) urging a restriction on the number of matches to be played at the Dhaka Stadium caused a few alarms in the mind of the football-wallahs. The cricket authority was

quite justified In making a move to gum up the works of their soccer rivals simply because the tournament came in the middle of the annual cricket season. The BCCB president, in his letter to the NSC, called for the hosting of only four of the meet’s 16 matches at the Dhaka Stadium, i.e. the opening match, the two semifinals and the final. The rest of the matches, the letter suggested, could be played at the Mirpur Stadium, exclusively built for football.

The BFF, meanwhile, is going the whole hog to generate interest of football fans after repeated inscrutable failures of the national football team. Renovation of a part of the stadium is going on with a tentative proposal for fixing the media centre at the Dhaka Stadium office of the Table Tennis Federation, already in the air. The two local outfits — Bangladesh Reds, the deferid-Ing champions, and Bangladesh Greens have already been announced with Abahani custodian Mohsin leading the former and Mohammedan

Sporting goalie Kanan leading the Greens.

The full Reds team is: Mohsin (captain), i’onir, Tayeb, Alamgir, Pljush. Masud Rana, Kaiser. Munna, Jewel Rana, Peter, Shabbir. Titu, Zakir, Rupu, Ri az, Aslam, Rumi, Mamun, Ranjan and Gaus

Greens: Kannan, Selim. Tutam, Moon, Shamim, Barun, Parvez, Rehan, Ata Khan, Sohel, Arman, Masud, Uttam, Zahid, Jewel, Naklb, Rakib, Ikram Rana, Tutul and Roxy.

Bangladesh Reds will play against Polonia Warszawa of Poland in the opening Ue of the meet on January 6 at 5.30 pm.

Finance Minister Salfur Rahman will Inaugurate the tourney.

- Eight teams including six foreign outfits will vie for the golden cup. However, it looks like the real fight will be limited to the strong European teams — notably the two from Romania and Poland, with the two Bangladeshi sides left with very little to achieve. Anyway, happy new year to the organisers.