BKSP U-18 football team departs for Japan Sunday

A 21-member Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protisthan (BKSP) Under-18 football team depart for Japan early today (Sunday at 1 am) to take part in the Sanix Cup International Football League.

The BKSP team will participate in the tournament for Bangladesh with the cooperation of Bangladesh Football Federation. Thirteen Japanese teams along with three foreign teams -- Bangladesh, India and South Korea - will participate in the league to be held in Fukuoka, Japan, from March 11-15.

BKSP Director (Training) Colonel Md. Golam Mabud Hasan and BKSP's Japanese coach Kai Taguchi of JICA will serve as the team manager and coach respectively. The sixteen teams will play in a round-robin league, split into four groups. BKSP will participate in Group D with three other Japanese teams.

The Sanix Cup is a highly prestigious international tournament in Japan, in which Italy's AC Milan Youth and Inter Milan Youth teams, as well as Netherlands' Ajax Youth, and the U-17 national teams of China, Korea, and Japan, have previously participated.

Last year, the BKSP U-17 team participated in the Fukuoka Tokai University Swimming Soccer Festival held in Munakata City, Japan, and won one, drew one, and lost one game in three games.

The organising committee invited BKSP to participate in the Sanix International Football Tournament this year, as the BKSP team showed competitive and spectacular performances in all three of their games and the games were of international caliber.

All the BKSP players who participated in the Swimming Soccer Festival at Fukuoka Tokai University were later selected to play in the Bangladesh U-17 team, and all the players in the first XI of the latest U-17 Bangladesh football team were from BKSP. As a result, the Bangladesh U-17 national team recently participated in two international competitions and achieved significant success.

By participating in such international tournaments, not only help the boys get the opportunity to develop their skills, but their experience in playing international tournaments will also play a more helpful role in enriching the national team.    �"BSS