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Federation Shield takes a blow

Sports Reporter
Football
The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has backtracked from its original plan of holding the Federation Shield with 18 teams in three venues following the poor response from district sports associations (DFAs), universities and services teams.
Instead the football's governing body decided to start the Federation Shield, a qualifying tournament for the Federation Cup, with 12 teams in two venues Feni and Jessore —from September 12. This comes despite the BFF calendar stated that the season 2012-13 would get underway from August 30.
Participating 12 teams, split into two groups, will play the tournaments and top three teams from each of two venues will be given the tickets for the Federation Cup, which is scheduled to start from September 24.
Generally the qualifiers of the Federation Cup is held in Dhaka with the participation of the interested teams but this time the venues for the qualifiers have been taken outside Dhaka and the clubs at district level have been given room to compete against giants likeAbahani, Mohammedan, Sheikh Russel, Muktijoddha Sangsad through the qualifying tournament.
So far, only three teams from Feni, Khulna and Noakhali officially sent their entries to play the qualifiers while two more district teams were supposed to send entries by yesterday night as the BFF invited all 62 DFAs, six universities, BKSR all services teams and seven clubs from Bangladesh
SEE PAGE 17 COL 8 FROM PAGE 16 Championship League.
Out of a 21-member BFF Executive Committee consisting of representatives from six districts — Khulna, Barisal, Gopalganj, Chapainawabganj, Cox's Bazar and Nilphamari DFAs, only Khulna's representatives have responded to BFF's invitation.
Tournament Committee chairman and BFF vice president Tabith M Awal defended the BFF citing that they were forced to defer the seasoncurtain raising tournament in a bid to ensure the participation of maximum teams but they finally got a poor response from the teams they had invited forthe Federation Shield. The last date of sending the entries was August 10.
“Some of teams told us that they would take part in the tournament if it would begin after August 30 and we did it but they finally did not send entries,” said Tabith after the Tournament Committee meeting yesterday.
"Before the BFF election, organisers of DFAs had cried out for not having tournaments at the district level, but now they are not interested to play the tournaments when they have been given opportunities,” observed Tabith, who called time on his own football career last season.