Sheikh Russel Krira Chakra, the treble winners of the 2012-13 season are eyeing to regain some of their credits with winning the title of the upcoming Bangladesh Premier League football. Russel KC one of the leading clubs of domestic football are preparing  the team with that target.

The 2019  premier league will kick-off  in the fourth week of current month instead of January 18 as announced earlier. It will take almost eight months to complete the league. The league committee had to postpone the league for one week as a number of clubs are not ready to play on under prepared new venues.

Sheikh Russel, since winning the title of the Federation Cup, Independence Cup and finally the League Championship in 2012-13, they could not keep up their momentum in the next few seasons when they had to come through huge trouble also.

However, this time the All Blues get prepared to bounce back when they also tipped off to be one of the top contenders to win the league title after playing the semifinal in the season’s opener Federation Cup and the final of the Independence Cup.

It was very much impressive to see an improved  graph of Russel’s performance from the season’s opener Federation Cup. They began tournament with defeating Muktijoddha and Abahani Limited in the group stage then Chittagong Abahani in the quarterfinal, though conceded solitary goal defeat to Bashundhara Kings in the semifinal.

In the Independence Cup Russel were more impressive when they survived the Group of Death with goalless draw against Bashundhara Kings and Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club and stormed into final outplaying Chittagong Abahani and formidable  Brothers Union by 2-0 each in the quarterfinal and semifinal and finally went down to Bashundhara by 2-1 after fighting 120 minutes in the final.

But Saiful Bari Titu, head coach of Russel who showed some of huge prospects of the Russel’s strong comeback to through huge challenges to other contenders in the league, when talking to this correspondent yesterday, said, “First of all, usually Federation Cup is a warm up tournament but this time it was not only preparation tourney but was very competitive tournament which earmarked the qualification for the AFC Cup.”

Titu, who always rated the league as the real ground of competition said, “Tournament is easier clash than league, as it is always different type of clash.”

“League is a long run battle, it is more than tough to do good result in every match and Russel will make an attempt to win the league championship.”

“Actually, it would be more than tougher this time, as this season the league will take place in different venues across the country, so it will come difficult for all teams to be familiar with the local venues’ condition,” Titu, former national star revealed.

About his team’s prospect, Titu said, “Honestly, we are very much capable, but like as all the contenders, we are also mostly depend on the foreign booters, truly, they play the important role in team’s success and here also they will make the difference.”

“But I also believe that you can’t be fully depended on the foreign players, local players will have to go along with the foreigners, in this respect a strong side bench is very vital for any team and we have some good performers to rely on, like, Bipul Ahmed, Fazley Rabbi, Sojib, Saikat Munna, Shahed, Julfiqkar, they have ability to score goals. It will be a plus point for every team, if the local players can score alongside the foreign players.”

“Overall I can say all the teams will want to get the proper output from the players. I think both the local and the foreigners will try to have their best to reach the ultimate goal,” said Titu.