“I received death threats”: Bangladesh football coach makes explosive claims 4 days after being sacked

Bangladesh Under-20 football team head coach Gerard Jones lost his job after the team’s hopes of reaching the main tournament ended following two consecutive defeats in the AFC Under-20 Asian Cup qualifiers.

The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) decided to terminate his contract on 4 September, a day after the team’s 3-0 defeat to Syria.

Four days after his sacking, Jones has spoken out about his time in Bangladesh. In a lengthy Facebook post from Kansas City in the United States, he claimed that while working in Bangladesh, he faced personal attacks, leaks of his personal information and even death threats.

"Criticism of football decisions is completely fair. Personal abuse and threats are not. I’ve had nasty messages, personal information leaks, death threats. And for what. Behind every coach and player is a human being. I am a husband. A father, a son," Jones writes.

The BFF, however, did not give a specific reason for removing Jones in its official statement. It only said that he has been relieved of his duties as head coach of the Bangladesh Under-20 team for the AFC Under-20 Asian Cup qualifiers and that the federation has terminated his contract.

However, a BFF source had said Jones was removed following an unpleasant incident involving assistant coach Atikur Rahman at the team hotel on 19 August, as well as the team’s poor results. The situation escalated into pushing and shoving during an argument between Jones and the assistant coach. Jones later called the police by dialing national emergency service 999 himself.

Meanwhile, Jones said he did not want his time working with Bangladesh to be judged solely by the results. He wrote, “I went to Bangladesh with a much wider vision around youth development, methodology, talent identification, coach development and diaspora recruitment. Unfortunately, the short period of time meant there was very little opportunity to begin implementing that longer-term work as part of the original role.”

“From a coaching perspective, I had around 9 weeks with the players before competing internationally against external countries with significantly more established player pathways, deeper player pools, with their rosters consisting of top talent playing in much higher recognised level professional leagues and environments alongside the preparation time,” he added.

However, Jones also saw improvement in the team during training. He claimed, “During our preparation, in Bangladesh our team showed better possession retention, wide and central rotations, box entries, high pressing and counter pressing but unfortunately we weren't able to consistently reproduce enough of that when we arrived in Uzbekistan and in a lot of ways, the team was unrecognisable from the principles I thought we’d established in Bangladesh.”

Jones, however, does not want his long coaching career to be judged by the results of two matches. Highlighting his coaching experience, he said, “Two international matches does not erase nearly two decades of coaching, leadership, player development, coach education and building programmes, elevating standards, improving teams and increasing numbers where I’ve implemented good ideas across different countries at much higher levels and for more prestigious institutions. Nor do they define where my career goes next.”

He also gave his assessment of the structure of Bangladesh football. Jones wrote, “We have to reflect on reality. Bangladesh hasn’t qualified historically and until there’s a significant change in recruitment, infrastructure, culture and several other key areas, not to mention being able to attract high level players and give them accommodations and environments that match their expectations, it won’t either.”

Jones however wished Bangladesh’s players and football well saying, “I genuinely wish the players and everyone involved in Bangladesh football well. There are some talented people and an enormous passion for the game.”