And with the deadline for receiving entries ending this evening, the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) is expected the total number of participating teams to be around 47.

The BFF believes it does not have legal right to force all the 64 districts of the country to play in the biggest club-level football competition.

"Participation in the National Football League is not mandatory for any district. To avoid this problem happening in the future we have to consider making it compulsory for every district," said BFF general secretary Anwarul Haque yesterday.

Talking to a group of reporters, Haque asserted that the deadline for entries would not be extended as they wanted to start the qualifying round as early as possible.

"Time is running out. We need to kick-start domestic football at the earliest," Haque said.

He also revealed that the qualifying round, where districts would be divided into five zones, would start between June 15 to 20. Besides, the service teams (Army, Navy, Air Force, BDR and Police) would have their own qualifying round.

Defending NFL champions Mohammedan Sporting Club, runners-up Abahani Krira Chakra, Muktijoddha Sangsad and Arambagh Krira Sangha are the automatic qualifiers in the 10-team final round.

All the ten teams would receive Taka one lakh each as appearance money. The winners of the final round will walk away with five lakh taka while the runners-up will collect three lakh taka. The third-placed team gets Taka two lakh.

Each man-of-the-match in the final round will get five thousand taka while Taka 50,000 will be awarded to the man-of-the-tournament.

Meanwhile, the officials of Leisure Sports Management arrived in the capital on Tuesday night to finalise marketing matters with the BFF officials.

The BFF has formed a 37-member National Football League Committee with Shah Alam Chowdhury as chairman and Manjur Hossain Malu as secretary respectively.