Many may have heard the name only now but the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Goal Project was first awarded to Pakistan in 1999. This also happens to be the very year that it was approved by FIFA at its Congress meeting in Los Angeles.

The project is FIFA`s gift to the third-world countries in a bid to popularise football there. There are over a hundred such working or under-construction projects in countries such as Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, India, Guam, Morocco, Senegal, Uganda, Sierra Leone, etc.

The international soccer governing body handles most of the cost of construction of these projects that besides having an administration block, boasts of a ground, gymnasium, swimming pool, academy and hostel for grooming footballers. But in order to build all this, you must have land big enough to begin with, which the country provides.

Pakistan is lucky to have been awarded three such projects in the last 10 years. The first one given to Pakistan by the international football governing body was to be built in Karachi. But when the government of Sindh failed to provide land to the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) until 2003, the project was shifted to Lahore as soon as Syed Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat took over as president of the PFF. The people of Karachi, especially Lyari, who pride themselves for their past achievements in football in the region, have not been able to forget this. The PFF chief started on the wrong footing with them and was seen as an adversary from day one.

After the completion of one goal project, FIFA awarded another to Muzaffarabad after the 2005 earthquake. It was named the Earthquake Project. But this project too had to be moved from Muzaffarabad after they couldn`t provide the PFF with appropriate land. It came to Peshawar after the NWFP Football Association`s president Syed Zahir Ali Shah offered two acres of land for the project at Shahi Bagh. Work though is yet to begin there.

It was in 2006 when Karachi was again awarded the Goal Project. Having wasted one chance already, the Sindh Football Association (SFA) was quick to find land this time, at Trans Lyari Park or Gutter Bagheecha, as it is commonly known. But the City District Government Karachi took its own sweet time in handing over the papers to the association. It was also revealed that the district authorities had planned a housing scheme for their officers on the amenity plot.

Lyari, Karachi`s Harlem, which boasts of over 150 registered football clubs and 70 per cent of football activity in Pakistan, deserves the Goal Project.

A two-year delay and the PFF`s warning to the SFA about the project being moved yet again from Karachi to Quetta this time prompted the SFA to give up on its initial choice to start looking elsewhere. On May 15, during the final of the National Football Challenge Cup (NFCC) at Lyari`s People Sports Complex, Sindh Minister for Katchi Abadis Rafique Engineer, who also happens to be the SFA`s patron-in-chief, requested the chief guest, Sindh`s Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah to help them get appropriate land for the project in Karachi. The chief minister complied by offering them a new piece of land.

The new site is situated in Hawkesbay`s Scheme 42. It was 10 acres of land which both the PFF and FIFA approved of. The location was ideal too. The PFF saw more potential for football activity there as situated near the beach, it could later also be utilised for beach soccer. If growing grass near the sea and its salt spray was a problem, FIFA was willing to increase the construction funds from $400,000 to $500,000, which would allow the laying of Astroturf to make the ground available for play all year round.

The stadium at FIFA Goal Project-II would be the first PFF stadium in the country as the federation has yet to own a football stadium in Pakistan. Goal Project-I in Lahore is built next to the football stadium owned by Punjab Sports. It is not PFF property. The PFF to this day rents stadiums for its many football activities.

There was the land, there was the approval by FIFA for the project and hence the money to build it and so all should have been well. But there were problems and more problems. After over six months of jumping over one hurdle after another the SFA`s Karachi zones, the ones responsible for getting the land, felt like they had been given a bucket with a hole by the PFF. They filled it with water and brought it to the PFF which told them to go refill it as it had run out of water.

The Lyari Development Authority (LDA) had at first said that it could only allocate the land to the SFA. After several hiccups, the summary for the allotment was approved by the Sindh chief minister on Oct 21, almost a month and a half after the expiry of FIFA`s second deadline of Aug 31 (the first deadline was July 31).

But then even the third deadline of Dec 25 couldn`t be met as SFA`s papers were still not found to be in order by the PFF. The land needed to be subleased in the PFF`s name as the PFF and not the SFA happens to be FIFA`s member association. But how could it be subleased when it hadn`t even been leased to the SFA? That couldn`t happen until construction of the Football House on the said piece of land and that too within a span of three years.

Yet the PFF maintained that if if had been done in Lahore and Peshawar, it could be done in Sindh as well.

Meanwhile, the people of Lyari became really disheartened. Lyari, Karachi`s Harlem which boasts of over 150 registered football clubs and 70 per cent of football activity in Pakistan, deserved the Goal Project. Its people began thinking that the PFF just didn`t want them to have a goal project and said that the PFF was unnecessarily finding faults with their papers.

It took them so long to get this second piece of land and they didn`t know how long the board of revenue would take to add another clause to the deed of lease before the project would be taken away from them for a second time. They had been informed by Faisal Saleh Hayat that the PFF had already been offered land for the project in Quetta. The SFA could first only manage to get an NOC from the LDA that allowed the PFF and FIFA to start construction but the PFF thought that it may not be good enough. Still it forwarded the document to FIFA and awaited word from them.

As the final deadline on Jan 20, reportedly given to the PFF by FIFA, drew near, the SFA`s zonal bodies declared war on the PFF. They accused it of conspiracy, of trying to kill Lyari football. There were hunger strikes and burned effigies of PFF officials as the Lyariittes went about politicising the whole affair, which ultimately went in their favour.

Last week the Federal Minister for Sports Pir Aftab Shah Jillani stepped in and requested the Sindh Chief Minister to make an exception to the existing rule and cancel the earlier allotment order made out to the SFA and reissue it in PFF`s name.

FIFA Goal Project II stays in Karachi. The people of Lyari, the pioneers of football in Pakistan, have won the match!