Former football president Anura de Silva

"The main reason for football's downfall is, players are not trained from the childhood. It should be developed from the grassroots level. In the current set up, the children are not given a proper technique and infrastructure."

"Through this system, we cannot produce a professional player by the age of 18 or 19. That's the reason we deployed foreign players for the past Sri Lanka matches. We provided them with the citizenship of Sri Lanka to represent the national team and we were able to play better football in the World Cup qualifiers. More than 10 foreign players were in our radar to get them to the national team."

"Apart from that, we should start the grassroots level programmes. It cannot be done by the Federation alone, there should be a national programme to identify the talented players and develop them."

"In other countries such as the UK, players are coming through from the age of 6-7 and they come out as a professional player to the national circuit. Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka, we don't have that kind of system."

"We cannot conduct tournament for the Under-13 players, as it is a rule in our country. We have missed that opportunity. We should produce professional players, otherwise Sri Lanka football will go down in international arena."