The Football Foundation – funded by the Premier League, the FA and the government – is spending £30m per year to build 3G pitches, yet two are being ripped up

Forget the Arsenal Stadium Mystery, the London Soccer Dome Conundrum is one that should be exercising everyone from policymakers to Football Association officials and anyone who cares about the future of football.

It is a puzzle that is hard to unpick and equally difficult to take sides over but the upshot is Europe’s largest indoor football facility is this week being ripped to pieces on the banks of the Thames in North Greenwich.

Two full-sized artificial pitches, still in good condition having been shielded from the elements by two huge domes, will be ripped out and the adjoining cafe, changing rooms and classroom spaces will also be demolished.

On Monday morning, builders in hard hats had already begun tearing up the fixtures, fittings and floors in the reception area. It will be gone altogether by 15 January next year. The former Crystal Palace striker Mark Bright was among those to tweet of his sadness when the doors were shut for the last time last week on a facility unique in the capital but its demise has passed off without many of those who stream past it to the O2 arena, and the growing cluster of restaurants and bars that surround it, really noticing.

The cavernous indoor facility began life in 2005 as the David Beckham Academy amid a blaze of publicity. For the last five years, since the former Manchester United icon pulled out in 2009, it has played host to everyone from corporate bankers from over the river in Canary Wharf to local disadvantaged youngsters on subsidised courses to Premier League academy sides and much-needed coaches taking their FA badges.

Its fate was sealed this year when Knight Dragon, a property development consortium owned by the Chinese Cheng family, accelerated plans to build housing near the site, having bought out fellow developer Quintain in November last year.

It had been assumed the facility had at least a couple of years’ grace but the desire to get on with the development means the area occupied by the Soccer Dome has been earmarked as an equipment store, housing diggers and cranes to serve the nearby development. The 3G pitches, with at least four years’ life left in them, will be auctioned off by the demolition company but it is unlikely they will end up being used to play football on.

Like Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, who last month unveiled a scheme that he claims will have up to half of its 1,300 units earmarked for low rent or shared ownership schemes near the site, some might argue affordable housing in a city crying out for it is more important than an indoor football pitch – however well appointed.

Others might consider that under the terms of an agreement last year between Greenwich Council, the Greater London Authority and Knight Dragon, the developers were able to reduce the overall proportion of affordable housing on the wider development from the 38% agreed with the previous landowners in 2004 to around 25%.

That deal led to the local housing association accusing the council of “pushing out poor people”, amid a wider redevelopment that will lead a further 10,000 homes springing up along the Thames as part of the glitzy £5bn scheme. The developer, in turn, would doubtless argue it needs to be able to fund a project that will include not only housing but restaurants, cafes and a school and will give life to the areas on the fringes of the O2 and a purpose to Johnson’s underused Thames cable car.

In the middle of all this stands Beckham’s former academy, one which ended up looking remarkably like the living embodiment of the football hubs the FA chairman, Greg Dyke, spoke so animatedly of at a briefing at Wembley last month to unveil his £230m vision for the future of grassroots football in England. He spoke of his dreams for large facilities dedicated to football, that would run at break even and host a range of activities from matches and training for junior teams, to sessions for coaches and referees, and adult sessions that would subsidise those other uses. And, in turn, that the facilities revolution could help sustain a huge uplift in the number of qualified coaches teaching young footballers to play the game the right way.

Admitting radical action was required to reverse a dire facilities deficit and investment needed in trying to close the gap between the 3,735 artificial pitches in Germany and the 639 in England, he delivered a seductive – if as yet unfunded – vision that might start to turn the supertanker. Dyke was describing a centre that sounded remarkably like that being dismantled on the banks of the Thames within easy reach of a public transport hub.

In its glitzy life as a Beckham brand extension it was often in the spotlight – visited by the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, to promote healthy lifestyle initiatives and originally envisioned as one of a network of Bobby Charlton’s Soccer School-style facilities across the world. When it closed in 2009, even Beckham’s own sister protested outside. The facility itself was saved, albeit with the signed shirts that hung on the walls as the only reminder of its famous one-time tenant. AEG put it in the hands of an organisation with limited funds but able to continue to keep it afloat. On Monday and Tuesday nights, adults would pay £5 each to play in a soccer sixes competition. During the day, a BTec course trained future coaches and those who wanted a career in the leisure industry. On Saturday and Sunday, there were coaching schemes for hundreds of kids. Academies from Crystal Palace, Millwall and elsewhere used it as an additional facility. The FA held coaching courses there that did not necessitate a journey to St George’s Park in Burton upon Trent or an overnight stay. With more investment, it could have fulfilled its potential.

Those involved down the years concede the Soccer Dome was only ever meant to be a temporary facility. The GLA masterplan has always had it down as a residential zone. They certainly do not blame AEG, the US sport and entertainment giants who operate the O 2 and looked after the land under temporary lease before it was sold to developers and put up the £4.8m it cost to build in the first place. Nor do they even really blame Quintain or Knight Dragon for wanting to develop the site. They are, after all, housing developers.

Their discontent is reserved for the fact no one stepped forward to take the facility or, at the very least, salvage the pitches for their original use. And there is an underlying sadness it did not inspire others to build similarly ambitious complexes elsewhere.

The Football Foundation – funded by the Premier League, the FA and the government – is spending £30m per year to build 3G pitches across the country. It belatedly changed its criteria to allow it to target those urban areas most in need but Dyke’s recent report is an implicit admission even greater investment is required to really shift the dial.

Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect a grassroots sports facility on prime development land to take priority over housing. But, in the grip of an obesity crisis and amid endless talk about the fading Olympic legacy, perhaps we also need to ask why we need to make a choice.

And turn left out of North Greenwich tube station, rather than right towards the spot where it nestles next to Johnson’s white elephant cable car noiselessly ferrying empty pods over the Thames, and you’ll see another dome that was supposed to be temporary. After a troubled genesis , it is now thriving in private hands.

This week it is playing host to the ATP World Tour finals, where thousands of spectators every day will sit in a splendidly appointed US-style sports arena while thrilling to the exploits of Andy Murray, Roger Federer and co. It can’t help but reinforce the impression that in this country we remain rather better at persuading the population to consume sport than providing places to play it.