A national level project in Bangladesh and one in Narayanganj district have been approved while five new projects in China, six in Iran, two in Thailand and one in Vietnam were given green signals.

The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) and the Narayanganj districts have given their commitment letters and the AFC Vision Asia team will carry out an assessment visit to the two projects after the appointment of a project coordinator in BFF.

The committee considered Project Chengdu and Nanjing in China as ‘mature’ but agreed to their requests of adding futsal as new discipline from 2010 onwards. The names of five new projects are also awaited from the China Football Association.

The members praised Iran Football Federation for initiating Vision Asia-like project in 16-17 provinces and six new projects in Iran – Ardebil, Khorasan Razavi, Mazandaran, Yazd, Khouzestan and Zanjan – were approved.

The committee also approved Project Khon Kaen and Phuket in Thailand.

Among the projects dropped were those in India (Delhi and Tamil Nadu), Vietnam (Hanoi), Uzbekistan (Bukhara and Tashkent), national level projects in Uzbekistan and Bahrain, while the national projects in Kyrgyzstan, Maldives and Oman were suspended.

AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam said Vision Asia could not operate in isolation and needed proactive support from the stakeholders.

“Vision Asia cannot work independently and needs to have commitments from MAs and city or provincial FAs for its success.”

“If the MAs are not willing to change their statutes and meet the demands of modern football, we have no option but to drop these projects.”

The process and procedures of Vision Asia implementation strategies were also tightened in order to ensure consistency of quality across all the projects. Specific goals and key performance indexes were also identified.