Blatter’s corroded football legacy

THERE are no recognisable soccer fields, no players and just a rusting goalpost at Pakistan’s Hawksbay training centre, built with a $500 000 Fifa grant on a windswept plot by the Arabian Sea near Karachi and completed two years ago.

In Nepal, the sole member of staff, a watchman, at the decrepit Dharan soccer academy built with Fifa cash in the Himalayan foothills hasn’t been paid in a year.

A Reuters review of soccer development projects in these two South Asian countries shows they are littered with half-built and underused facilities, despite receiving more than $2 million from the sport’s world governing body this year.

In recent weeks, Reuters reporters visited seven projects in Pakistan and Nepal that received Fifa money under its Goal programme, which funds soccer fields for youth academies and playing surfaces in stadiums. Just one had an active full-time training programme. Three had no proper playing fields.

During Fifa president Sepp Blatter’s 17-year reign, Fifa has poured money into such projects in some of the poorest corners of the world. Blatter has said the programmes aim to make the world’s most popular sport accessible to all, but critics contend such grants have helped ensure he retained power with support from the heads of soccer associations in countries not known for their footballing prowess.

Blatter was re-elected president for a fifth time in May, days after seven Fifa officials were arrested on bribery-related charges. In June, he said he’d step down once a successor has been elected in February.

Fifa declined to comment on Nepal and Pakistan but said most of its Goal projects were successful.

“Fifa has put in place stringent financial controls and audit checks to ensure, as far as we can, that the money we provide is spent on the projects we intend and is managed carefully,” a Fifa spokesman said. “Only in a small minority of cases do we discover problems that give cause for concern.” It isn’t certain how many of the more than 700 completed Goal projects around the world meet Fifa’s objectives. But there are clearly examples where Fifa money has made a difference.

In Mogadishu, Somalia, for example, a dusty national stadium boasts a smooth, bright green playing surface. In Costa Rica, the football association has used grants to build up a national sports centre.

“Look at the difference in so many cases of football associations not having headquarters or fields or technical centres before Fifa started investing in 1999,” said Jerome Champagne, a former Fifa deputy general secretary. “Governments don’t suppress the National Health System or the French social security because some people might cheat the system.”

Even so, there are places besides Nepal and Pakistan – parts of the Caribbean, for example – where Goal resources don’t seem to have reached those they were aimed at or haven’t been properly managed.

A Swiss probe into Fifa is looking at whether funds for development grants to regional and local soccer bodies were siphoned off for personal gain.

The presidents of the football associations in Pakistan and Nepal face leadership challenges from opponents who accuse them of corruption, which they deny. Both noted Fifa pays funds to contractors without passing through the accounts of member associations – a mechanism to avoid corruption.

Still, in Dharan, watchman Arjun Budathoki, 45, keeps an eye on the derelict centre. He was last paid his salary in August last year. For the two tournaments organised locally each year, the centre borrows a lawnmower.

“For the rest of the year we let the goats do it,” said Digmar Puri, who owns the animals.

Look at the difference in so many cases