All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) on Friday shifted the group stage fixtures of the SAFF U-20 Championship football tournament to the ANFA Complex in Satdobato due to poor condition of the Dasharath Stadium. The championship is set to begin on Sunday.

The country’s football governing body decided to change the venue of the tournament after SAFF match commissioner Abdul Hameed Abdul Ghafoor, after an inspection, deemed the Dasharath Stadium unfit to host matches.

The Dasharath Stadium was originally scheduled to host all SAFF matches.

“The match commissioner inspected the football grounds at both the Dasharath Stadium and ANFA Complex on Friday. After the inspection he told us that Dasharath Stadium is unprepared for hosting the SAFF championship,” ANFA Spokesperson Suresh Shah told the Post.

Abdul Ghafoor, a Maldives national, arrived in Kathmandu on Thursday evening.

ANFA released the fixtures of the Championship, rescheduling all the group fixtures at the ANFA Complex.

The semi-finals and finals of the Championship will be held at the Dasharath Stadium, ANFA said in a statement later in the evening.

Nepal will face Sri Lanka to kick off the SAFF U-20 on Sunday.

The poor management of pitch of the country’s only international-standard football stadium drew public criticism on Tuesday when Japanese football icon Keisuke Honda’s Paro FC and Martyrs Memorial A-Division League champions Church Boys United played their AFC Challenge League qualification playoff match in a muddy and puddled pitch, following an afternoon rainfall.

The stadium was hosting Paro only days after the Asian Football Confederation found the ground good enough to host international matches.

ANFA Vice President Deepak Khatiwada on Wednesday insisted that the responsibility to maintain the Dasharath Stadium’s ground should return to ANFA, further stressing that no games other than football should be organised there.

The Council took over the responsibility of the ground after Nepal was forced to move their second round matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2027 AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers to neutral venues in March, after the AFC representatives deemed the ground condition unsatisfactory.

The stadium is also scheduled to host SAFF Women’s Championship 2024 in October.