FIFA Has Been Giving Millions to Pakistan but Its Footballers Never Get to Play

This month, the world of football was rocked by plans for the European Super League, which involved a dozen of Europe’s richest football clubs, creating a breakaway closed-shop league.

The idea was vociferously opposed with unprecedented unity across the world. Then sports pundits called it emblematic of how much greed has taken over the game.

During the same month, events surrounding the suspension of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) by FIFA, the global governing body for football, showed how money has turned the game upside down even for teams outside the limelight.

Pakistan has one of the lowest-ranked football teams in the world – 199th out of 210 countries – and has long been a backwater for the sport. Earlier in April, FIFA announced the suspension for what it described as “third-party interference.” The latest suspension came after a mob allegedly led by a former PFF president dramatically broke in and forcefully occupied PFF offices.

PFF has been embroiled in an administrative battle for the last six years, and FIFA has suspended Pakistan twice because of it. This desire for controlling Pakistan’s football body hasn’t been accompanied by ambitious plans for transforming the sport in the country. Instead, as Ali Ahsan, the editor of the independently run FootballPakistan.com, puts it, “Control for the PFF is motivated by a desire to control the large sums of money associated with it, guaranteed funding in the millions of dollars each year.”

An intervention by the global body in the face of warring administrators and a weak team should sound like good news, but in Pakistan’s case, it is a worsening quagmire.

The PFF receives nearly $1.25 million from FIFA annually, and up to $800,000 from the AFC (Asian Football Confederation), yet there is very little to show for it. For example, FIFA has provided millions of dollars to the PFF as part of its Goal Project, which aims to “support the poorer national associations”. Yet despite promises to set up Goal Projects in 8 cities, only one was ever constructed,  while the rest remain either incomplete or never built.

“Control for the PFF is motivated by a desire to control the large sums of money associated with it, guaranteed funding in the millions of dollars each year.”

Fans and observers of the game in Pakistan have remained distressed and dismayed by the battles within the PFF, which have left the national team and players wandering aimlessly with careers going to waste.

The captain of the women’s football team, Haajra Khan, told VICE World News, “The last four-five years have been disastrous for the players, many of whom have either switched sports or left football altogether.” She added, “Our dreams are done. I feel like [football] is over for me.”

While there are somewhere between two to three rival camps jostling for the control of the PFF, and many self-serving administrators who can possibly be blamed, there is one man who has been at the heart of the PFF for almost two decades now, and one who remains the most important piece on the PFF chessboard – Faisal Saleh Hayat.

A graduate from King’s College in London and comfortable hobnobbing with the global elite, he drew his wealth and political power from land and a spiritual title he was born into. Corruption and nepotism accusations have landed him in court multiple times. He first came to power in the PFF in 2003, despite no real connection to football at that point. His actual connection was with the new military dictatorship in power, who he jumped ship to after abandoning his own party. The elections that brought him into the PFF even saw accusations that Pakistan’s military spy agencies helped him win.

“Our dreams are done. I feel like [football] is over for me.”

At the time, Pakistan was ranked 168th on the global charts. Over the next decade and change, its ranking continued to plummet. While Pakistan football continued to suffer, its main football administrator Faisal Saleh Hayat prospered. He has been a member and later head of the AFC Disciplinary Committee, head of the AFC Legal Committee, member of the AFC Executive Committee and a part of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee and the FIFA Strategic Committee.

Most notably, he struck close alliances with prominent Gulf leaders, such as AFC president Sheikh Salman of Bahrain, former AFC President Mohammad bin Hammam from Qatar, and Sheikh Ahmed Al Fahad Al Sabah of Kuwait, one of the most powerful men in the sport.

Hayat has been a crucial ally for these royals, supporting their bids in the global game, most notably the controversial vote for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup. In return, the AFC has been a staunch ally for Hayat, as it paid thousands of dollars in legal fees on his behalf, provided over half a million dollars for a project that was never built, and controversially transferred funds into personal accounts of Hayat loyalists.

But at some point, Hayat’s wheeling and dealing caught up with him, and his former allies began to fish for outright influence themselves.

Things came to a head after a controversial PFF election in 2015, which at one point Hayat held in his own home. The fallout from these polls led to remade loyalties within the PFF as well as several lawsuits. After two years of inaction, intervention from FIFA arrived in the form of a six-month suspension in 2017. This was followed by another two years of frantic politicking, before a new set of elections made Ashfaq Shah the new president (who would go on to be the head of the alleged mob in the recent PFF occupation). This caused a serious breakdown as Hayat refused to accept the results.

Despite desperate pleas from footballers, the feud also prevented Pakistan from sending a full-strength squad for international matches. Unsurprisingly, a weakened side lost in the World Cup qualifiers to earn their worst ever ranking, part of a six-year period where the men’s team played only seven matches.

Eventually, FIFA stepped in again in 2019 to appoint a normalisation committee (NC). After two years and yet more resignations and legal battles, the current crisis took place after Ashfaq’s group took umbrage at the NC’s failure to hold elections.

“Nothing can change in the long term until the government joins hands with FIFA and sweeps everything clean. At this point, there is so much chaos that it is impossible to fix things any other way.”

Speaking to VICE World News, Ashfaq Shah insisted that “Pakistan isn’t unique in facing this (suspension) from FIFA, other countries have faced it too. But the big question that still needs to be asked is: Why did FIFA fail to hold elections for the PFF despite having 18 months to do so?” When asked to comment on Pakistan’s plummeting ranking, he said, “You should ask those who have been in power in the PFF for decades now.” Faisal Saleh Hayat himself didn’t respond to multiple requests for an interview.

None of the rival administrative camps have expressed any desire to come to a consensus. On top of that, inconsistent policies by FIFA and the allegations of bias from AFC has led many to lose hope in the ability of these regulatory bodies to offer any solutions.

While PFF administrators have continued to wage their off-field battles, it is abundantly clear who is really paying the cost of their turf wars – the players.

Kaleemullah, who is Pakistan’s most famous and successful footballer, had already been blackballed once by Faisal Saleh Hayat. He said to the media recently that “there are thousands of players who have their bread and butter attached with this game, a ban would mean that these players will become jobless and their careers are destroyed.”

Umaid Waseem, the country’s foremost reporter on football, told VICE World News that “nothing can change in the long term until the government joins hands with FIFA and sweeps everything clean. At this point, there is so much chaos that it is impossible to fix things any other way.”

Pakistan remains one of the worst-ranked football teams in the world, even though it is one of the world’s most populous nations and provides most of the world’s footballs. But as the events of the past weeks (and years) have made patently clear, unless feuds between administrators end, there is little way out for Pakistan football’s predicament.

Follow Ahmer Naqvi on Twitter