Kazi Mohammed Salahuddin, the celebrity star in the sports of Bangladesh, now president of the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) predicts that Brazil and France among the tops have great chances to win the World Cup 2022.
Salahudin also elected as president of the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) for the third consecutive terms, in an exclusive interview with the Bangladesh Post on Saturday at his residence shared his prediction about Qatar World Cup, 2022.
The football legend of Bangladesh Salahuddin also said Qatar is well prepared to stage the world’s most mega occasion.
“I think preparation of Qatar is fantastic. They had some lacking but covered everything well. If we look back to the last four or five World Cup events, the budget for the tournaments were for one, two, five or 10 billion dollars, but this time Qatar expends 222 billion dollars to host the World Cup.”
“They have already decorated the capital city Doha magnificently and every corner of the country. You see, Qatar is a very small country, but one of the richest countries in the world and really they painted the country with a different look. I think they have taken every aspect very seriously in preparation for the World cup.”
Salahuddin commenting on some news of western media said, “I would like to say in this respect that western media are a flop, they can go everywhere and can publish anything they like to. Actually, you are also a media person, what will you highlight that’s up to you, success or failures. You can publish the truth or false, that is your concern. If we look to the world media whether it’s in Bangladesh, Europe or anywhere in the World, most of them are biased, they suffer from partiality. They spread propaganda with misinformation even about their own country. Now if you not go through the papers, watch TV, then you are out of information, if you read then you might be misguided by misinformation. So, I think media are not always the perfect way to know the real happenings. You may have seen, when BBC and some other media published news on our country, they only telecast all negative topics like flood, accident and some others that are humiliating for Bangladesh. They rarely publish any positive or developing activities.”
Salahuddin, the first international booter of Bangladesh who played the professional football in Hong Kong, replying to query about the favourites to lift the trophy of this World Cup said, “I think this time France and Brazil have great chance to be crowned. I count them on top. After them Argentina and England have possibility. You can tell about Belgium, Spain, Holland and Germany, but there are so many teams can only make upset, but considering the recent results, these four teams (Brazil, France, Argentina and England) are on frontline.”
Salahuddin remarked that Belgium might be turned into a Dark Horse of this World Cup. But about Netherlands, he is fond of, said, “Holland have no chance now, because, once they had Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten including the then some other stars, but there is a huge generation gap.”
“In fact it’s tough to evaluate which was the best match or the best World Cup, because each of the edition and each of the match has different tastes. There are huge changes in the tactics and technique, there is huge difference between the past and the present. Some individual charisma attracted the people but now the game is whole system, style plan and technique changed, now team game is important. All are top class matches in the World Cup, so it’s too much difficult to clarify which is the best.”
“I don’t mind whoever will be champions, I will enjoy, I am the only fan of Bangladesh as we are not there, so no headache for me,” Salahuddin revealed.