World Cup hosts making £150,000 donation

FIFA's 2022 hosts are putting the funds into the First Division South club’s successful women’s side following their promotion to the FA Women’s Super League Two, the new second tier of the women’s game.

With a £2m campaign to return the world’s first football club to their original home at the Olive Grove Sports Ground underway and receiving global backing over the summer, delighted officials believe the new partnership will prove to the Football Association that their women can compete at the top levels while they continue raising the £150,000 needed to develop the site of their old home and build a ‘Home of Football’ museum.

Sheffield FC chairman Richard Tims, pictured at the site, said fans can thank the links Qatar 2022’s chief Hassan Al Thawadi has with the city for helping to secure the cash injection after he studied law at Sheffield University in the 1990s.

Tims said: “We are delighted that Qatar has shown its commitment and pledged to become a founder of the Foundation and to also support our women’s first team’s application into the FA Super League.

“Mr Al Thawadi is already an honourary Yorkshireman by virtue of the fact he lived here whilst a student. He liked the synergy between the world’s first football club and the fact that people see Qatar as the new boys on the block of world football.

“When we open our museum on the site of the original home of football at Olive Grove, we will be able to share the history of the beautiful game with school children across the world, from where it all started to where it is now with a nod to the first FIFA World Cup in the Middle East."

He added: “We welcome Mr Al Thawadi onto the board and look forward to utilising his influential contacts across football. We hope he and our other partners are able to bring together people that care passionately about protecting the history and legacy of the game and want to encourage grassroots development.”

Al-Thawadi expressed his delight at backing the pioneers of world football after regularly watching Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday play when he was a student.

The Qatar bid chief, who joins Real Madrid's president Florentino Perez as an honourary board member at Dronfield, said: “I am very happy to announce our support of the oldest football club in the world as it relocates back to its original ground, Olive Grove, in the heart of Sheffield, the birthplace of the modern game.

“I have been so impressed by the vision of the chairman and staff at the club to develop such an exciting project with the aim of promoting sporting solidarity and encouraging grassroots activities within communities worldwide. Over the past few years since the chairman first contacted us we have been working together to look for suitable ways in which we could lend our support.

"Our modest contribution is part of a first step on an important journey for the club of gaining wider support for the project. I will be hoping to persuade others in the international football community to join in supporting this important mission to preserve this wonderful club and promote grassroots development.

“I hope that when the new ground and museum at Olive Grove is developed and schoolchildren from across the world visit and stand on the site where the beautiful game was created, they will be able to comprehend just how far the game travelled to every corner of the globe which resulted in the first Middle Eastern World Cup.”

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