RIYADH, Sau­di Ara­bia – Pres­i­dent of Guyana, Dr Ir­faan Ali and FI­FA pres­i­dent, Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no, re­cent­ly held dis­cus­sions cen­tred around the in­stal­la­tion of mi­ni are­nas in Guyana, par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ing hin­ter­land com­mu­ni­ties.

Talks sur­round­ing the gov­ern­ment/FI­FA part­ner­ship took place in Riyadh, Sau­di Ara­bia, where Dr Ali is at­tend­ing the ninth edi­tion of the Fu­ture In­vest­ment Ini­tia­tive (FII9).

The meet­ing in­clud­ed His Roy­al High­ness, Prince Ab­du­laz­iz Bin Tur­ki Bin Faizal Al Saud, Sau­di Ara­bia’s Min­is­ter of Sport, un­der­scor­ing the high-lev­el en­gage­ment on the ini­tia­tive.

The push for mi­ni-pitch­es is di­rect­ly linked to the FI­FA Are­na Pro­gramme, a flag­ship glob­al ini­tia­tive aimed at es­tab­lish­ing at least 1,000 new mi­ni-pitch­es world­wide by the time of the FI­FA Con­gress in 2031.

Its core mis­sion pri­ori­tis­es un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties and schools, es­pe­cial­ly in dis­ad­van­taged ur­ban and rur­al ar­eas, by pro­vid­ing safe, ac­ces­si­ble spaces for chil­dren to play, learn, and grow. Foot­ball is in­tend­ed to catal­yse in­clu­sion, ed­u­ca­tion, and pos­i­tive change.

Ear­li­er this month, Dr Ali con­firmed his gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for de­vel­op­ing and in­stalling sev­er­al mi­ni pitch­es in Guyana next year as part of the FI­FA Are­na pro­gramme.

Pres­i­dent of the Guyana Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (GFF), Wayne Forde, has al­ready an­nounced a “trans­for­ma­tion­al project” to in­stall the first two state-of-the-art all-weath­er mi­ni-pitch­es un­der the FI­FA Are­na Project.

The two pitch­es are to be laid at Hasling­ton, ear­marked for the East De­mer­ara Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (ED­FA), and at Re­trieve, des­ig­nat­ed for Lin­den’s Up­per De­mer­ara Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (UD­FA).

Ac­cord­ing to Forde, the pitch­es, which are man­u­fac­tured by Edel Grass BV of the Nether­lands, have al­ready been shipped and are sched­uled to ar­rive in Guyana on De­cem­ber 3, 2025.

Each pitch costs US$98,000 (G$21 mil­lion).

A FI­FA team and the man­u­fac­tur­er will han­dle the in­stal­la­tion, test­ing, and com­mis­sion­ing of these ini­tial fa­cil­i­ties.

Sub­se­quent­ly, man­age­ment, main­te­nance, and op­er­a­tions will fall un­der the re­spec­tive re­gion­al as­so­ci­a­tions, guid­ed by clear GFF poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions.

CMC