Ashfaq supports Naved, calls PFA members meeting illegal

KARACHI: Showing his support for Punjab Football Association’s (PFA) president Naved Haider, the newly-elected Pakistan Football Federation’s (PFF) president Ashfaq Hussain Shah has rejected the recently-held PFA members meeting at Lahore as “illegal activity”.

In the so-called extra-ordinary Congress meeting of the PFA in Lahore on Saturday, PFA president Naved Haider had been suspended for five years.

Ashfaq expressed his full confidence in PFA chief Naved and rejected the illegal suspension. “All those close to former President Faisal Saleh Hayat are now trying to mislead the football family by false and illegal self-claimed notifications which hold no legal value,” he said in a statement.

He said district football associations all around the country, including Punjab, completed their four-year tenure on March 31. Before fresh elections of DFA, nobody could issue any notifications to manipulate the election process, he added.

PFF seeks a transparent election and club scrutiny process in all districts around the country to ensure that only genuine football clubs are participants of voting system unlike what happened during the last few years in the reign of Faisal who “always misused the powers to manipulate the system”, he added.

“Bogus club registration was a common practice at the time of Faisal,” Ashfaq said. He said that this time scrutiny process of clubs would be transparent and all bogus clubs that were created on political grounds would be eliminated from the system.