Bright Stars, the national football team | File photo

The South Sudan Football Association will receive operational funding from FIFA for the years 2019 and 2020 as the first step of a relief plan to assist the football community impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

South Sudan has registered six cases since the outbreak of the pandemic in in the city of Wuhan in December 2019.

The pandemic has brought sports in the world to a standstill with most sports events suspended or moved forward from their initial planned start dates.

In South Sudan, SSFA followed other football organizations by suspending all its footballing activities due the pandemic.

With countries crippling economically and players not earning salaries due to the suspension of football in the country, this fund comes timely for the association to help provide relief help to players and club administers.

Being among member associations affiliated to world soccer governing body, the national football association will receive up to a tune of $500,000.

In a statement, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said: “The pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges for the entire football community and, as the world governing body, it is FIFA’s duty to be there and support the ones that are facing acute needs.”

Infantino further said this starts by providing immediate financial assistance to our member associations, many of which are experiencing severe financial distress.

As part of the measure, all remaining entitlements of member associations to operational costs under the Forward 2.0 Program will be released in full for the years 2019 and 2020. In particular, the release of the second instalment of operational costs for 2020, which was originally due in July, will be paid immediately.

Under normal circumstances, SSFA would have only received the full amount of the contribution upon fulfillment of specific criteria. Instead, FIFA is now transferring this amount as an active support to help safeguard football across all member associations.

Concretely, this means that FIFA will release USD 500,000 to each member association in the coming days as well as any remaining entitlement for 2019 and 2020.

This immediate financial assistance should be used to mitigate the financial impact of COVID-19 on football in member associations, namely to meet financial or operational obligations that they may have towards staff and other third parties.

The standard obligations and responsibilities in relation to the use of these funds as outlined in the Forward 2.0 Regulations remain fully applicable and will be subject to the standard audit and reporting process.