While the inaugural “Vantage FFSL President’s Cup” football tournament has reached its final stage, one of the persons who was instrumental in planning and introducing this tournament to give a kick start was Anura de Silva, the incumbent President of the Football Federation of Sri
Lanka(FFSL). Daily News spoke to him to share his views whether this tourney has helped them to achieve the desired goals. According to Anura, the main intention of formulating and conducting this tournament was to restart competitive football which had a drastic impact, after Easter Sunday attacks in April 2019, adverse weather conditions during the latter part of 2019 and followed by the outbreak of COVID19 pandemic from March this year. With the situation gradually turning towards
normalcy, they opted to introduce an effective and aggressive programme to restart and restore football in an attractive manner, following the health ministry guidelines.
The FFSL decided to support players, officials and clubs to restart football. They wanted to create a platform to select potential players for the National and U-23 squads, with the aim of establishing a better national team to take part in the FIFA World Cup 2022 qualifying rounds matches, originally scheduled for October and November 2020, which apparently is delayed until March next year due the pandemic, under new coach Amir Alagic from Bosnia/Australia.
The world football governing body FIFA and AFC have provided them grants for football development on an annual basis and they had surplus from the 2019 budget, where they could not complete scheduled activities due to the situation in the country, which they used to conduct this tournament.
At the same time, their proud sponsors Ebony Holdings Pvt Ltd., had shown interest under tough situations when they faced the pandemic, which was a remarkable achievement for FFSL.
They are pretty satisfied with the way the tournament is conducted with the finals to be played on September 2(Wednesday). This tournament has enabled them to unearth many potential players while observing some constructive football by clubs, a new enthusiasm by clubs with the assistance they had from FFSL. The provision they made to include players from non-playing
clubs has really paid dividends for the upliftment of the game as all clubs came out with complete outfits to compete at a strong level.
“The FFSL is happy that the clubs, players and club owners are overjoyed with all aspects of the event so far provided by us.
The National Team Head Coach Amir Alagic and Selectors are also impressed with the outcome. Overall, it’s been a successful event pleasing all stakeholders of the game.” Said Anura
“The launch of this tournament at the right time in terms of the situation in the country really helped us have the edge over other sports in the country. Media coverage was at the highest level as we launched the competitive events before other sports and my sincere appreciation to all media organizations.” concluded Anura.
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