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Lahore: Former Punjab Football Association (PFA) Vice President Rana Ziaur Rehman said that football was kept hostage for 16 years by the previous setup and now the most played game in the country required to be worked upon for rehabilitation on urgent basis.
He criticized the previous setup for not giving clubs the right to register and favoritism was in vogue that kept the previous setup in power for extended period of 16 years despite below par performance of the federation.
“Though it be former Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) President Faisal Saleh Hayat or PFF Presidential candidate Amir Dogar, they didn’t let clubs to get register from their districts,” he said.
“It pains me to say that due to their likes and dislikes, there are only 550 clubs which have been registered in Punjab. If they didn’t do favoritism, the number of registered clubs would have been huge, which would be very beneficial for the progress of football,” he added.
“The same stands true for other provinces of the country.”
He further said that if the qualified clubs were registered, there would be at least 1500 clubs in Punjab alone.
He said that he has written to the Normalization Committee in Pakistan established by FIFA and AFC where he stressed on clubs registration, their scrutiny, establishing academies, conducting referees and coaches’ courses and also asked them to audit of accounts of last 20 years so that it can be evaluated how much funds PFF officials received from FIFA and AFC and where did they spend the funds.
He further said that it should also be assessed why nine goal projects were completed despite receiving huge funds so that people in the country could know why football has not progressed, rather regressed in the country.