South Asian Football Federation (SAFF), the football governing body of South Asian region set their target to organize the SAFF Club Cup football tournament from 2024.
The organisers of the SAFF reached to the decision to hold the SAFF Club Cup tournament in their congress was held recently in Bangladesh.
SAFF was used to organize only football tournament, the SAFF Championship (national team) but since Kazi Mohammed Salahuddin, president of the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) after being elected the president of the SAFF, the organization has been organizing tournaments for different age group of men and women regularly.
However, the SAFF high ups in their last congress have already prepared a preliminary draft and discussed among them, and finalized all necessary steps to take to organise the tournament when the secretariat of the SAFF has been working with that.
The SAFF have also decided that the tournament will be organised with eight teams when the clubs will play their matches in home and away basis.
Meanwhile, secretary of the SAFF, Anwarul Haque Helal, said the Bangladesh Post on Saturday, “We have already prepared a proposal to start the new tournament (Club Cup) of SAFF as early as early possible in coming year.”
Helal, former general secretary of the BFF also said, “We will discuss with the marketing agent (Sports Five) of the SAFF Championship very soon to confirm everything to roll the ball of the SAFF Club Cup tournament.”
Helal when talking about the eight teams, said, “There are seven members in the SAFF, two teams will be allowed from the top ranked country of this region, one team each from rest of the six countries will participate in the tournament.”
“In case, if any of the countries will unable to participate, two teams from second ranked country will have the opportunity to play in the tournament when eight teams will play splitting into two groups,” Helal added.
As the marketing company expects that the tournament would be a successful one and want to make it exciting, and decided to organize the matches in home and away basis when they (Marketing Company) also offered an attractive prizemoney.
Though the organisers have already completed their necessary home works but yet to fix the date when the tournament will be kicked off. As SAFF Helal also said, “We will have to finalise the schedule of the SAFF Club Cup after reviewing the AFC Calendar and the participants’ countries domestic fixtures to avoid clash with the SAFF and AFC tournament and the countries local competitions.”
“So it will take at least three months to finalise all to start he tournament, said Hela, a long server GS of the SAFF,” said the SAFF General secretary.