Football world urged to support bid to bring oldest club ‘home’

THE WORLD of football has been urged to get behind ambitious plans to help the oldest club return to its spiritual home in Sheffield.

World Cup hosts Qatar have already thrown their weight behind proposals to bring Sheffield FC – the world’s oldest football club – back to the city to Olive Grove, a stone’s throw from their original ground.

A delegation of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, which is leading the construction of stadiums and infrastructure ahead of the 2022 World Cup, visited for the first time on Thursday to meet club officials and to tour the site.

A team from AFL Architects, which designed the National Football Museum in Manchester, also revealed proposals for a stadium, car park and visitor centre celebrating the role the club has played in the beautiful game. Chairman Richard Tims, inset, described Sheffield FC as the ‘original pioneers’ of the game and Qatar as the ‘new pioneers’. He added: “We want to relocate back to the home of football. “This will be a great move for the city.” Mr Tims said the history of the club would form an important part of the site which he believes could become an “international tourist centre” for football fans internationally. Qatar has not pledged funds for the scheme at this stage and the visit was seen as a way of establishing links and getting the ball rolling. A previous appeal launched in 2015 to raise £2m for the project yielded about £40,000 – but there are hopes the visit will help to kickstart the project again.

Mr Tims said he hopes “Qatar will be the catalyst” and urged the “rest of the world of football” to back the plans.

Chelsea FC have been the first club to answer the call and pledged £1,905 to the fund – a nod to the year of their formation.

Mr Tims said: “Every football fan in the world should want to come here to the home of football.”

David Davies, a former executive director of the Football Association who attended the University of Sheffield, said: “This is a hugely diverse group of people from different backgrounds and it is an example of how football can bring people together.”