Bangladesh made an early exit from the SAFF Championship after conceding a 3-1 defeat against Maldives in what was a make or break Group B fixture at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The loss completed Bangladesh's worst ever performance in the regional showpiece event where they have failed to win a single game. They drew their opening game against Pakistan goalless before losing their next match 1-0 to Nepal.
Nepal's victory against Bangladesh was their first in 18 years while Maldives, once considered a favourite punching bag, notched up their first win against the so-called favourites in 12 years.
But those two painful defeats and a disappointing draw that threw Bangladesh out of the competition's first round for the third time could hardly be described as shocking. It is more than that and to be honest it exposed the massive decline of Bangladesh football.
While India are still the team to beat in the eight-nation meet Bangladesh can be best described as a spent force with Maldives and new entrant Afghanistan coming on in leaps and bounds.
For the sake of record, Maldives' Ahmed Tahariq struck twice inside the first 20 minutes while Ali Ashfaq put the final nail in Bangladesh's coffin. Shahedul Alam Shahed scored the only goal for Bangladesh in the competition.
The team took an early flight back home yesterday. But prior to their departure from Delhi the disgruntled players were quick to blame their Macedonian gaffer for the gaffe.
“I have played under a lot of coaches like (George) Kotan, (Edson Silva) Dido, (Zoran) Djordjevic, who all designed their plans after settling the playing eleven because it was important for the players to understand themselves. But this time the players lacked the understanding mainly because no one knew who was going to play the next match,” said Bangladesh captain Sujan.
It is true that Nikola Ilievski, the 57-year-old Macedonian, did a lot of experiments with the squad and it eventually did not work. Ilievski started against Pakistan with three debutant players and brought four changes each against Nepal and Maldives in the last two matches.
But wasn't that a responsibility of the idle Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) to intervene and wisen up a foreigner, who is only here for seven months, to the fact that the SAFF Championship is like a World Cup for Bangladesh and that there is no scope for experiments in such a high-profile tournament.
The central defender also said that the coach's ploy of playing 4-3-3 was too demanding for the players who are rather used to a conventional 4-4-2 formation.
Central defender Ariful Islam even questioned the credential of Ilievski.
“To be honest, I haven't learnt anything from my coach rather I've forgotten what I had learnt before. Actually it was all Greek to me whatever he wanted to teach.”
Football speaks a universal language. But the evil of it is miscommunication. And if Ariful's statement is based on facts then this should have been addressed and solved by the BFF after the first day of practice and not after an important tournament.
Ilievski is not fluent in English. He struggles to communicate even with the press. But burdened with all the allegations against him he reserved perhaps the best shot against his critics.
“I was not optimistic about the tournament from the beginning and we lost some players due to injuries and took many new players. Besides, there is also no football in Bangladesh for the last five months and I have no magic to change the team in 30 days,” said the 57-year-old Macedonian.