LAHORE: President of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat has claimed that besides the unlimited loss to the players, coaches, referees and many others, the federation has suffered a financial loss of Rs70 million in different heads, during three-year’s control over the FIFA House by Lahore High Court’s appointed administrator, and someone will have to be answerable for these losses because it were the losses of FIFA and AFC.

Addressing his maiden press conference at the FIFA House after taking control from the administrator on March 1, Faisal said precious three years of footballers, coaches and referees had been lost, just because of the unfair interference of the government in PFF affairs.

“Soon after taking the charge, the PFF hired the services of an audit company, which disclosed that damages to the FIFA building will require a sum of Rs33.5 million while the football equipment in the store of the FIFA House worth Rs33.5 million is also missing,” he claimed.

“Besides that, the administrator and other staff also withdrew the amount of Rs33.5 million as salaries, without holding a single football activity in the three-year span,” he said. “The data base, which we prepared registering 80,000 players and several football clubs is also missing and it is not an easy task to put the football’s affairs back on the track.

“On my request, FIFA is sending a delegation to Lahore on March 23 to personally examine the present condition of the PFF to prepare a roadmap to put the affairs back on track,” Faisal said.

FIFA lifted the suspension on the PFF last month after the division bench of the LHC ordered the administrator to handover the control of the FIFA House to Faisal, overruling its single bench decision given around three years ago to appoint an administrator, retired justice Asad Munir, to run the PFF. FIFA then banned the PFF in October last year due to the third party interference.

Faisal also claimed that soon after taking the charge by the administrator, some three years back, the accounts of his tenure years were audited but nothing wrong was found as he did nothing wrong in his tenure.

He said now it must have become clear on everyone that only those national sports federations could work which had affiliation with their international bodies.

He said players, referees and coaches were biggest losers in all the three-year fight which was held just to elect Captain (retd.) Safdar as PFF president in 2015. “The government forcibly occupied the FIFA House through its armed supporters,” he alleged.

According to Faisal, the first executive committee meeting of the PFF was held at the FIFA House on Saturday which endeavoured to prepare an activity programme. He said two most qualified coaches of Pakistan, namely Shahzad Anwar and Sajjad Mahmood, had been appointed as Director Technical and Director Competitions to start the football activities.

He said as the PFF has no money at the moment, it has written a letter to the AFC to issue a special grant of $300,000 to the PFF to start its activities.

Last year, Faisal said, he had signed an MoU with Chinese Football Association, which is an emerging power of the world in football, to help out the PFF. He said due to administrator’s control, he could not disclose the development according to which the Chinese would help the PFF, both in administration and technical sides.

He said the executive committee also prayed for the departed souls of the football family, who had died in these three years and among them are national player Shalyla Balouch, Tauseef Ahmad and Nasir and a staff member Babar Khan. He also thanked presidents of FIFA and AFC for extending their support to him during the last three years.

For the future plans, he said an Under-16 girls football tournament will be held every year after the name of Shalyla Balouch. Announcing a programme of fooball tournaments, Faisal said Pakistan Premier League would start in October this year.

Besides that, the National Challenge Cup will be the first tournament to be held in August. “A national women football championship will also be held while courses for coaches and referees will also be staged,” he said.

Faisal said Pakistan also had to compete at the Asian Games, SAF Championship, and various U-16 and U-19 continental tournaments this year.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2018