KARACHI: Pakistan football team’s assistant coach Shehzad Anwar has dismissed reports that Zavisa Milosavljevic will be shown the door after humiliating defeats at the AFC Challenge Cup qualifiers last week.
While reports have surfaced that the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) has made up its mind on sacking the Serbian from the post of head coach, Shehzad said he was set to continue until his contract expires in November this year.
Pakistan featured in their most crucial assignment when they took part in the qualifiers since Zavisa joined in 2011. The team was required to win at least two matches in Group B that featured the hosts, Tajikistan and Macau.
Despite strong preparations and a hefty amount spent by the PFF, Pakistan lost their matches against the central Asian countries but managed to fish out a win against Macau in their last encounter.
However, Shehzad said Milosavljevic’s sacking was not on the cards. “They’re just rumours,” Shehzad told The Express Tribune. “As an assistant coach I haven’t heard anything. Submitting a tour report is a regular practice. I haven’t heard anything about the Serb getting fired during.”
Meanwhile, Shehzad also downplayed Pakistan’s poor show, saying the team showed significant improvement.
“We used to concede a lot of goals against these teams but in this tournament we played well. If we get another coach, he will have to start from scratch and that will unsettle the progress we’ve made.”
Meanwhile, PFF Secretary Ahmed Yar Khan Lodhi said the federation will take a week to go through the report before commenting any further.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 28th, 2013.
I agree that a new coach will take at least a year to get on track. Under Zavisa our team is progressing at steady pace and hopefully that it will get better in coming months.
Our Team is actually progressing and We can see Evolution in our team and We should give Serbian coach every chance to continue with our team. He is familiar now with our environment and i am hopeful our team will progress under his guidance.
Under the Serb our team is progressing and had improved alot.The next assignment of coach will be SAFF Cup in which we hope our team will produce much better results .A new coach will take alot of time to understand the team and conditions.The Serb should be given more time so that our team can improve.
BREAKING NEWS: NABIL ASLAM (Pakistani International) has just scored in Danish League vs AaB Aalborg to level the match at 2-2
yeh he should stay.. team has played well aand has given tough time to teams like tajik and kyrgys…
Infact Zavisa deserves 2-3 years more extentin to contract. By now he has better understood our team. Knows where is weakness and strength. By appointing new coach it will disturb rhythem and cordination of our team as new coach takes time to understand our team. Pakistan played well and put up a better show than before. Margin of defeat was minimal and Pakistan was unlucky. Given more time he can make our team better if not best.