SAFF C’ships postponed
It was planned in December 2017 to stage the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championships. This competition has been postponed and a future date has not been notified.
The main reason for this is the busy football schedule for Bangladesh. It was then decided to stage the contest in India. But India cannot stage the event because they are busy with their own football schedules.
The tournament is conducted by The South Asian Football Federation and organised by the Bangladesh Football Federation. As they are unable to schedule the contest, they are faced with a big problem.
Due to this the training schedule of participating countries, including Sri Lanka, are faced with problems.
In the earlier competition, eight South Asian countries participated but now Afghanistan has indicated that they will not be participating. As a result only seven countries will be taking part.
Afghanistan has stated that the football standard in South Asian countries is not so high and they hope to take part in competitions staged by South East Asian countries.
In the last two editions of the SAFF Championships, Afghanistan were the runners-up and India emerged champions. India has to date won the competition on seven occasions.
As a result of this the Sri Lanka football pool is also languishing.