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Does de Kruif have time?

ATIQUE An AM from Kathmandu
+ Dutch coach Lodewijk ▲ | de Kruif cut a forlorn figure at the team hotel yesterday morning. He SAFF was sitting at the lobby championship with his goalkeeping .m^Imi coach Kees Kalk, per-haps contemplating his next plan of action with the Bangladesh team.
There was no media frenzy around the Dutchman, who has become used to it ever since taking up the position, and has successfully lived up to the challenge, albeit often with haughty replies. But since the first defeat against Nepal, his replies have mellowed down considerably. De Kruif knows well enough that the job of a football coach is one of the most
ephemeral ones in the world.
When Bangladesh Football Federation employed the coach and his deputy Rene Koster just over two months ago, they had one short-term target which was to reach the final of the SAFF Championship, apart from a long-term vision of teaching the national team a Dutch style of football, which would start from the youth level. A good showing in the AFC Challenge Cup in March - when de Kruif was in charge temporarily -wooed the BFF to pen a two-year deal with the coaches. De Kruif then asked for a trainer and a specialist goalkeeping coach and his wishes
were duly fulfilled.
Two months later and after a rigorous time of practice and a number of practice matches at home and abroad, de Kruifs charges made a humiliating exit from the SAFF Championship, with only one point in their bag.
There were signs in the last two matches that Bangladesh have made progress, especially in keeping the ball in possession and the passing, but the haphazard defence and the inability of attackers to create scoring chances have showed that the team have not yet adapted to the teachings of the coach so far. Team
manager Iqbal Hossain, who was a dependable midfielder of the national side for a long time, admits that the progress has been very limited in the last two months.
"The passing has improved but the bridge between the midfield and attack was not there. The defence too was bad," said Iqbal yesterday morning. "Two months is a good enough time to build up a side, you can take a side from zero to 70 per cent in two months, but it did not happen."
Where did it all go wrong then?
The coach has sometimes laid the blame on the referees and other
times on his own players for the shambolic performance, saying that some of the players were not mentally 100 per cent to perform. One or two of his players, on the other hand, claimed that they could not recover in time from a rigorous training camp where they had to practise two sessions with a break of only two hours, especially right after completing a grinding season.
Midfielder Jamal Bhuiyan though feels it was the players themselves who were to blame. "It's not the coach's fault because the players have to play the game, they have to deliver, they have to do the right tactical things," he said.
But it is true that there was perhaps a lack of discipline and motivation on both sides. When all the coaching staff miss their flight to Kathmandu, just because they had a long night, who else is there to blame? Then again, when a player hides his injury from coaches to be part of the side or one underperforms because he does not like the position that the coach plays him at, who is there to blame?
De Kruif has hinted that he would go for an overhauling of the squad, 'finishing' some of the players who did not perform and building up a side around some young players who have performed well.
But after such a flop show questions have already been raised: Will de Kruif be given that time?