The Nepali football team is in a promising and exciting stage right now. The team is full of young talent with huge potential and few veterans who can help the youngsters with their experience.

The team also consist of a young fierce manager in Abdullah al Mutairi who is very ambitious and wants the team to play attacking free flowing football. But on the flip side we can also say that we don’t know if the players are good enough with many youngsters only making the national team squad very recently and the Coach Abdullah al Mutairi can also be labeled inexperienced with him only managing the Kyrgyzstan U-16 before the Nepal job So it is absolutely critical for ANFA to handle their resources properly as with proper utilization of the resources they can provide a clear pathway of the Nepali football team to follow.

One of the biggest barriers for the growth of Nepali football has always been fitness (both, physical and match). Former Nepali coaches Johan Khalin and Bal Gopal Maharjan have both complained about the lack of proper resources required for the proper fitness of the team.

Bal Gopal Maharjan has also complained about the Artificial pitch on ANFA complex in which the National team train in stating, “Playing on the artificial turf isn’t the same as playing on a natural grass surface. Bounce of the ball, movement of the players and other technicalities are altered. This goes on to affect the performance during the match and ultimately the result”.

A new seven team league was also introduced in April 2021,2021 called the Nepal super league which in the long term may be a great addition for the Nepali National team but the tournament being cramped into only a month long pushed the players fitness to the extreme which may also trigger muscle injuries to the players in the near-by future. The tournament was played in a single venue as there were no options.

Nepal also seems to have a massive incompetence when it comes to big football projects as there always seems to be a delay which may be caused due to various reasons like Corruption, Lack of skilled manpower, Lack of proper resources and many other reasons.

Pokhara international stadium is not still completed, construction of international stadium in each province is still a fake promise made by the government. Nepalgunj, Biratnagar stadiums are good only for domestic tournaments but not for international standard tournaments as they don't meet criteria set by AFC & FIFA.

An example of this can be seen in the Chitraban Stadium in Chitwan which had raised a lot of hopes among locals and sport enthusiasts in Chitwan. The project has an estimated budget of around NRS 1.7 billion which plans to host around 17000 people. It has been six years since the project started and as of now still only one-third of the project has
been completed.

It is also Nepal Govt who took five years to complete the renovation of Nepal’s home stadium Dashrath Rangasala after the 2015 Nepal earthquake which was way longer than anticipated.

If we can't construct the stadiums, let's construct well-equipped training fields across the country and put makeshift parapet (which you can see at ANFA complex). If we do so we will have more players engaging to the game. They will get more playing time on a proper surface and the quality of the players will increase. We will have pool of quality players and it will ultimately help Nepalese football.

So ANFA and national sports council should really focus on building more training pitches for the players. Artificial turf that the team trains in currently is not similar to the pitches the team plays games. So it will affect their performance in some way.

The artificial pitch is also considered dangerous to the team as it prompts injuries and something that FIFA isn’t really a fan of as FIFA Men’s Major tournaments.

Football has always been played on real grass and the use of artificial grass on Women’s World Cup 2023 has also been banned, which is hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

So Nepal's concerned authorities should construct more training fields rather than stadiums (because they can't construct them on time)

Pranish Bista.