FIFA official under fire again as efforts to derail NC continue.

Byline: Umaid Wasim

KARACHI -- With the latest letter, came more criticism. The supporters of Faisal Saleh Hayat have been relentless in their vilification of Alexandre Gros, the senior governance services manager of FIFA's Member Association Committee who oversaw the appointment of the Normalisation Committee for the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF), and it shows no signs of stopping.

Earlier this month, shameful scenes were witnessed during a protest staged by a small group of Hayat supporters, who burnt effigies of Gros, the Normalisation Committee chairman Humza Khan and retired Col Mujahhidullah Tareen, who is one of the committee members. The supporters were following a call from former PFF chief Hayat in which he asked them to go out and protest to appoint a committee which was 'controversial, biased, and agenda-driven'.

In the latest step, Munir Ahmed Sadhana and Syed Najib Hasan Shah - two members of the committee who were proposed by Hayat - have written a letter to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, a copy of which is available with Dawn, in which they have criticised Gros and called the Normalisation Committee a 'non-starter from the beginning' due to the appointments of Humza and Mujahid.

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'Mr Alex Gross, the FIFA official designated to oversee these formalities was sadly found wanting in his responses when his attention was drawn to these so obvious and visibly blatant inconsistencies and violations,' they wrote in the letter regarding the appointments of the aforementioned duo who they called 'highly controversial persons in the context of Pakistan football'.

The criticism of Gros was brief - unlike the earlier letter written by Najib and Munir to FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura and AFC secretary Dato Winsor John. That letter, a copy of which is available with Dawn, alleged the FIFA official of 'blatantly violating the rules set by FIFA itself'.

'In order to hide his guilt for blatantly violating FIFA directives due to his whimsical, nonsensical and malafide agenda, he [Gros] has misled the FIFA higher-ups keeping them in the dark by presenting handpicked, wrong and self-crafted picture that has no nexus with ground realities of Pakistan football,' they wrote, accusing Gros of a partial attitude towards them.

In that letter, they asked FIFA to formulate a new body 'otherwise Pakistan football is fast stepping into a major meltdown, the making of which will lie...