Bangladesh appoints Belgium's Tom Saintfiet as head football coach

Bangladesh Football Federation has verbally put Belgian coach Tom Saintfiet in charge of the national team for three months.

Yet to officially sign a contract with the BFF, Saintfiet arrived in Dhaka on Tuesday morning.

National Teams Committee Chairman Kazi Nabil Ahmed said the 42-year-old manager was provisionally given the responsibility ahead of Bangladesh's playoff matches for the Asian Cup qualifiers.

After a meek 6-0 aggregate defeat at the hands of Tajikistan in the first round of the playoffs, Bangladesh will take on Bhutan in the second. The first leg is scheduled for Sep 6 in Dhaka with the return leg to be played on Oct 11 in Thimphu.

Saintfiet, who has coached Togo, Malawi, Yemen, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Namibia, confirmed the news of his taking over the coaching duties to the reporters and went to attend the practice session of his new apprentices.

Later, Nabil confirmed Sainfiet had taken over.

"When we sent him a draft of the contract, he was on the plane. We included some of our observations in the agreement. He told us he had sent it to his lawyer.

"The official signing is yet to be done. But everything has been finalised verbally. There are some legal terms here, which he has to see…Hopefully, a deal can be struck in three-four days," Nabil said.

Earlier this week, reports had emerged saying Saintfiet had been shortlisted for the position of Nigeria coach.

"We have seen that he has been shortlisted for Nigeria coaching job. We will take a decision according to the situation if he gets the job. But now we are employing him for three months," Nabil said.

"Our contract states that depending on the result of the Bhutan encounter, the deal will be renewed following mutual discussion. His three-month tenure starts today."

"This agreement contains fewer clauses than the previous one," he said with regard to the federation's thorny relationship with outgoing Dutch coach Lodewijk de Kruif.

"I think the new contract leaves little space for conflict," Nabil added.