FIFA officials reach Lahore

KARACHI: A two-member FIFA mission on Friday reached Lahore to brief the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) on the FIFA Forward Development Programme.

‘The News’ learnt through a highly reliable source that the two-member delegation is headed by FIFA’s Regional Director for Asia and Oceania Sanjeevan Balasingam. Sanjeevan, a former journalist from Malaysia, had also visited Pakistan in 2015 and had observed the PFF elections at Changla Galli, Abbottabad, as representative of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The basic purpose of the visit of the world body’s delegation is to feed the PFF how it could benefit of the FIFA Forward Development Programme which had been launched in 2016 when Gianni Infantino took over as the world body’s president. The delegation will also visit the PFF headquarters which has been recently regained by the federation following the Lahore High Court’s verdict a few days ago.

Sanjeevan last year in an interview had said that they were at the forefront delivering the “FIFA Forward Development Programme”. “So what has happened is that we have created a newer and better system to develop tailor-made projects to our 209 Member Associations (MAs). We are aware of the geo-political and cultural sensitivities and sensibilities,” Sanjeevan had told Starsport last November.

He said this enables FIFA to deliver proper tailor-made projects that are key to football development from the grassroots to elite level. “We have to make sure that the projects are well structured to develop the game in every country,” Sanjeevan said.

FIFA website says about the programme: “We are significantly increasing our financial support for member associations and football development to 5 million US dollars per four-year cycle for each member association from 1.6 million US dollar per cycle.”

“Each association has access to 750,000 US dollars per year for football projects such as pitches, competitions and women’s football. And every association also receives up to 500,000 US dollars per year for running costs in areas including administration and governance,” it says.

“We are increasing our financial support for the six confederations so that they can do more to develop football in their regions. Confederations now receive 40 million US dollars per four-year cycle for football development, up from 22 million US dollars.” it says.