Football In Pakistan

What about football in Pakistan. Did anybody like football in Pakistan. I hope many, is not?

No !!! i don't like

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I love to watch football.

Teams i like Manchester United, Chelsea, Celtic, Rangers, AC Milan, Barcelona, Lyon, PSG, Ajax, and "Brazil"

I think Pakistanis can perform a lot better in this game, our government need to pay little attention to support players in football.

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Salam Pakistan,

Pak People
Love Pakistan, Love PTV, Love Lollywood, Love Pakistani dramas, films, radio, music and songs, Love Pakistani Products

Sunday, October 07, 2007

LONDON: Adnan Ahmed has admitted his ultimate aim was to play football for England. But the 23-year-old from Burnley is now hoping to realise his World Cup dream with Pakistan.

Ahmed, who is a British-Asian of Pakistani descent, was called to the Pakistan team this week for their World Cup qualifiers doubleheader against Iraq later this month.

“Obviously, my first choice would have been to play for England. I think that’s the dream of every footballer born in this country. But, realistically, that was never going to happen,” said Adnan.

However, Ahmed and the rest of the Pakistan squad, which includes former Fulham defender Zeeshan ‘Zesh’ Rehman, will have a mountain to climb if they are to reach the World Cup main round in South Africa.

In recent times though, Pakistan government and the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) have invested more money into football. The appointment of Bahraini coach Salman Ahmed Sharida in late 2005 with assistance from Bahrain FA has helped the team achieve some stability and improvement with respect to fitness levels, and teamwork.

With an active interest in Europe-based players, Pakistan are hoping to make an impact in the qualifiers this time, something Ahmed is looking forward to be involved in.

“Last year, PFF was scouting for players throughout Europe. They knew I was playing in England and they got in contact with me,” he said.

“It was totally unexpected, but obviously I was really delighted. My mum and dad are both from Pakistan and they are very happy too,” he added.

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	Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=75049

Last edited by php_web on Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:44 am; edited 1 time in total

Wednesday, October 31, 2007
By Alam Zeb Safi

KARACHI: The Fourth Pakistan Premier Football League, including 14 leadings teams, will kick off tomorrow (Thursday) at different venues of the country.

The marathon affair, which is being held on a home and away basis, will last till February 6, 2008. On the opening day, four matches will be held. The fourth position holder of the previous edition, National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), will take on Chaman’s Afghan Club here at Sharafi Football Stadium Korangi while Karachi Port Trust (KPT), who had finished fifth the last time, will meet Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) here at the KMC Football Stadium.

In the third showdown of the day, Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), who had finished third in the last Premier League, will start their campaign with the match against Wohaib Club Lahore at the KRL Football Stadium Rawalpindi while, in the fourth match, three times winners and defending champions Pakistan Army will face Punjab Medical College in their opener at Army Stadium Rawalpindi.

As per schedule, all the matches will start at 1:00pm and 3:00pm every day. A total of 182 matches would be held at six different centres. Sixty-five, the highest number of matches, would be conducted here at Karachi.

In the Lahore and Islamabad centres 39 matches each, while in Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Chaman (Balochistan), 13 matches each will be held. Each team will play 26 matches during the tiresome journey, and at the end the team finishing with the highest number of points will be declared as the winner of the prestigious affair, being held under the auspices of Pakistan Football Federation (PFF).

The participating teams include the defending champions Pakistan Army, the runners-up of the previous edition WAPDA, Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), National Bank, Karachi Port Trust (KPT), Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC), Pakistan Navy, Railways, Chaman’s Afghan Club, Wohaib Club Lahore, Habib Bank Limited (HBL), Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), Punjab Medical College (PMC) and PTV.

In the last edition eleven teams had participated after the PIA withdrew from the event at the eleventh hour due to internal problems. Habib Bank had been relegated to the B-Division after finishing at the lowest position the last time, but they have been given another chance after they formally requested the PFF for another opportunity in the important event on the condition that the once strong side would overcome its problems and would perform more better in the future.

The fresh inclusions in the event are the Punjab Medical College (PMC) Faisalabad and Pakistan Television (PTV), who had claimed the top two positions in the PFF League (B-Division) held last year.

PFF have already announced handsome prize money for the performers. The winners would claim a bonus of Rs 500,000, the runners-up will receive Rs 300,000 while the team which finishes third will receive a purse of Rs 100,000. The match winning bonus has been kept as Rs 20,000, the losing side will receive Rs 10,000 while in case of a draw Rs 20,000 will be equally distributed between the two teams.

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	Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=77982

Last edited by php_web on Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:44 am; edited 1 time in total

The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) have always vowed to improve the standard of the game in the country. They have worked their heart out to promote the game at grass-root level and strived to provide more opportunities and international exposure to its players.

Lately, they (PFF) have been trying to acquire the help of Pakistan-born foreign-based players to provide stability to the (national) team so that the team improves its rankings and starts performing at Asian level at least if not at international stage.

Besides that, a private TV channel also staged a championship (known as the Geo Super League) in Karachi, in which five teams took part namely Karachi Baazigars, Lahore Lajpaals, Quetta Zorawar, Islamabad United and Tribe FC Peshawar. This was a very supportive step by the TV channel to give exposure to the local players and the event, thus, turned out to be a massive success.

Coming back to PFF's plan of action, as many as eight players (Pakistan-born) were called up from England, where they were playing in lower leagues, to join the national squad ahead of Pakistan's matches in 2010 World Cup Qualifiers.

I had a very strong feeling that (calling up players from England) won't really help the team's cause immediately as making those footballers play straight away in totally different atmosphere and circumstances wouldn't be easy and it proved so, unfortunately.

Pakistan had a tough Qualifier against the Asian champions Iraq on the 22nd of October at Lahore and they, according to their coach and local experts, were geared up for a daunting challenge ahead.

Days before the match, ex-players and media were hailing PFF chief's efforts for holding such an important match. What didn't get to my mind was staging such matches isn't that important until and unless the team performs well. That what really counts, doesn't it?

And more important to the people here was the calling-up of foreign-based players. They thought they would sprinkle some magic powder in the team and the squad would immediately start doing wonders and ease past tough opponents. It is easier said than done mates.

Akhtar Mohiuddin, Pakistan's head coach, before the match against Iraq said that "we are looking for the timely click of combination among the local and foreign-based players and I hope they will provide the good".

How in the world can that be possible, and in such a little time? The players, who were called up from England, have a totally different playing style. Zesh Rehman, a former Fulham (an English Premier League side) player has played at the highest level. He of all people must have known that mixing up with the local players right away won't be that easy.

What we need first is time and proper coaching. If we do have time, we can chalk out strategies and tactics to combine up the talent we have and utilise it in a proper manner. Then we have to create a playing style which is known to each and every player and easy to adopt.

Football isn't always a one man show and the whole team has to perform at a certain level equally to give the goods. Lack of coordination doesn't really help one's cause and can prove lethal for the team's progress.

Whatever were the circumstances, four-time South Asian Federation (SAF) Games gold medallists Pakistan took on the recently-crowned Asian champions Iraq, who had just lost a friendly to Qatar. And the national team coach, himself, knew that beating Iraq would be very very tough. He said: "Iraq is a very good side and under the coaching of Egil 'Drillo' Olsen, it would be very difficult to beat them".

Olsen, a Norwegian, had led Norway to qualification for World Cups on two occasions during his tenure -- in 1994 and 1998. Under his coaching, Norway even reached their career-high ranking of 2.

Pakistan, who were ranked 179 in the world before the match and had a 25-player squad to select for the tie, were hammered 0-7 by Iraq, ranked 65th in the world. In total now, Pakistan has won only one match out of eight they have played against Iraq conceding 40 goals in the process. They have scored only six times against them.

Mahdi Jaleel was the star performer for Iraq as he scored a hat-trick. Other scorers for Iraq were Nashat Akram, Mahdi Karim, Al Hamd and Emad Ridha.

Pakistan defended very poorly in the game and their strategies totally failed. For once, Zesh played as a defender and then his position was changed to a midfielder. There was no stability seen in the match and Iraq took total control of the match from the word go.

The match at the Punjab Stadium, which saw around 500-600 spectators at the start of match will see the return leg being played on October 28th (today) in Aleppo, Syria. Iraq will not host the home tie because of uncertain political conditions.

The result showed that no coordination between the called-up foreign-based players and locals was seen and there was a total mayhem on the field.

Iraq, who had beaten many favourite teams on their way to clinch the Asian title, proved too strong for them. Pakistan though kept the deficit to two goals in the first half but they totally gave away the match in the second. None of their players shone on the field except for a few occasions when Zesh and skipper Mohammad Essa tried to pull one back for the national team.

Iraq's coach, Olsen, was still convinced that the standard of the game in Pakistan had rapidly improved in recent years and the team has a bright future in the years to come.

No doubt the team has made some progress and have a bright future ahead, hopefully. But what we lack here is proper training facilities, playing grounds, supportive staff and professional coaches. We have the talent, the skilled players that are needed to build up a strong team; what we don't have is the machinery to bring up the talent, polish them, expose them and combine all the available talent into a strong unit.

As mentioned earlier that Pakistan has made a rapid progress, it can be justified by the fact that they won the gold medal in the South Asian Games, held in Colombo (Sri Lanka) last year.

And that feat they achieved when they hadn't called up players from other countries. All the local players combined together to bring this laurel for the country.

I won't say that foreign-based players shouldn't be included in the squad but this should be kept in mind that local players should be given a chance before them. We should extract the raw material from different cities of Pakistan and breathe a new life in that new found talent.

If we will start recruiting expatriates in the team than the local lad will feel they are being neglected, ignored and the state of the game in local areas would be severely affected in a negative way. We should keep our faith in home-grown talent first.

The upcoming assignments for Pakistan are other World Cup Qualifiers and the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship, which will be played in last week of May next year in Sri Lanka and Maldives. Hopefully they will perform better in those events and will showcase the talent that we have in ourselves.

By Muhammad Shahbaz Zahid
The writer is a staff member at 'The News' Karachi

yeah i do like soccer..i like i even more than criket...iyt do has a great future we just need some attentin towards pakistani soccer

I LOVE Football and it is the best sport in the whole world. THE BEST TEAM ON THE PLANET IS MANCHESTER UNITED Very Happy

!!!
RONALDO Very Happy

ROONEY

TEVEZ

ANDERSON

NANI

= THE FUTURE OF FOOTBALL AND MANCHESTER UNITED Very Happy

BRAP!!!

I like watching football/soccer/footy.
its time for pakistan for come up with some strong team.
come on pakistan..... you can do it!

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I like Brazil and only Brazil when we talk Foodball. Lets say no to Foodball in Pakistan

football football football

I like Foot BAll and cricket, Pakistan's Foot Ball Team did well, recently by equalling with Iraq, i believe Pakistan can arrrange some professional coach for foor ball as like cricket then we can have best team of world, i will pray for Pakistan Foot Ball Team.

Qamar

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Qamar Bukhari

to my mind Football is less important in Pakistan and do not get the responsibility, whicht this Sport deserves. But the last time i was in pakistan-summer 2006- i play football there with my cousins and buddys. And to my surprise most of these guys are interested in playing football....maybe it was connected with the Fifa world cup 2006.
Here in germany its different...you can say football ist the most important game with a lot of fans, clubs etc.

we should start playing the american football in pakistan . it would be also a nice way for our people to vent their anger at everyday life and a nicer way to kick some american a...

hate it

really

first get some grouds then play something

Does any channels show pakistani football? is there any league and how is the level? there are a lot of great pakistani footballers around in europe, but it seems that the pakistani football federation doesnt care to bring them in for the national squad, cuz those players got other passports than pakistani.

	Riya wrote:
	No !!! i don't like

football is the most thrilling game i have ever seen, but his footbal is like american football, each team has more than someties 100 players and it is full of techniques plans and you can not just go inside and play, i have never seen any game in which so much physical and planing is required

I very like football,because i life in germany. Rolling Eyes

i kike foot ball only to watch it. Rolling Eyes

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i have to learn

I say yes to football in pakistan.its got great potential but the government needs to support it a bit more....PROUD TO BE A PAKISTANI...
SAAD
London