Lalmonirhat U16 girls became the champions of the first ever BFF-UNICEF U16 Women’s National Championship defeating Magura 4-0 in the final match of the tournament at Bir Sreshtha Shahid Sipahi Mohammad Mostafa Kamal Stadium in the capital’s Kamalapur on Saturday afternoon.
The BFF, with the financial assistance from UNICEF, held this tournament this year for the first time in order to pick out some young talents from the grassroots as well as to spread the game among the girls across the country.
The week long final round of the tournament’s first edition started on July 20. Eight teams, who qualified through a preliminary round, started their journey to become the country’s best teenage girls’ team.
After the final match, the champions and the runners-up teams were awarded at a gala prize giving ceremony where BFF Women’s Football Committee chairman Mahfuza Akhter Kiron was present as the chief guest.
Among others, UNICEF officials Jean Jacques Simon and Iftikhar Ahmed Chowdhury attended the ceremony as the special guests.
A total of 40 districts took part in the tournament’s qualifying round that took place at six venues across the country from June 20 to July 2.
The champion teams of the six venues and the two best runners-up teams, who fought their champion opponents real hard, were chosen to compete in the final round.
The eight teams were split into two groups to play round-robin league matches to determine the four semifinalists, which were held on July 26.
Mymensingh, Lalmonirhat, Gopalganj and Rangamati were drawn in the group A. On the other hand, group B was composed of Magura, Khagrachhari, Rajshahi and Narayanganj.
The champion team of the final round was awarded with trophy, medals and prize money Tk 50,000 while the runners-up received Tk 25,000 in addition to the trophy and medals.
In December 2018, UNICEF Bangladesh signed a two-year-long partnership agreement with the BFF to bolster girls’ empowerment through football.
According to the partnership agreement, the UNICEF has been appointed the exclusive Development Partner of Bangladesh National Girls’ Football Team.
Besides, the UN body will be working closely with BFF to encourage more girls to participate in football by organizing national talent hunts and football tournaments covering all the 64 districts of Bangladesh on a yearly basis.
UNICEF wants to reach the children across the globe through sports. It also found that popular sports like football can play a useful role in empowering children in general and girl children in particular.
In its first edition, the talent hunt competition helped the federation to mobilize the local football authorities i.e. the District Football Associations as the DFAs organized different types of football events to pick up the football talented girls from country’s rural areas to take part in the tournament. The BFF believes that this tournament will help Bangladesh’s women football to get a number of young talents like Sanjida, Tohura and Shamsunnahar, who are now the Bangladesh’s football ambassadors to the international arena .
