By Shahrukh Sohail, Chief Editor, Islamabad
Following an anti-climatic dismissal from the AFC Challenge Cup Qualifiers, it’s straight back to the drawing board for the Pakistan Football Federation and coach Zavisa Milosavljević.
The Serbian took charge in November 2011, but only faced his true challenge this March.
Getting past Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Macau was never going to be easy, but hard-luck and a questionable midfield eventually led to narrow losses against the two tough teams.
While Zavisa is set to stay on as the coach, the PFF, perhaps for the first time, deserves some credit.
They managed to organize several friendly tours to Nepal, Maldives and Dubai, making sure that the troops were well-drilled before the penultimate matches. However in Bishkek, the Tajiks edged it out in injury time and Pakistan’s momentum went out of the window.
And now that the team has been eliminated, instead of ruthless sackings and curbing down development, the PFF should invest even more. Keeping Zavisa at the helm shows vision, but it remains to be seen what measures are taken in order to prepare the boys for SAFF Cup later this year.
According to Marketing Director, Sardar Naveed Haider Khan, a triangular series with Bangladesh and India in England are in the pipeline for this June. That will not only serve as a much-needed PR boost, but the locality of the games will allow almost all of the foreign-based players to take part.
Hassan Bashir (Nordvest FC), Muhammad Ali (BK Avarta), Yacoob Butt (Skovshoved) and Yousuf Butt (BK Glostrup Albertslund) have established themselves as regular starters, with young goalkeeper Yousuf being tipped as the next custodian of the posts by star defender Kamran Khan.
However, the absences of Shabir Khan (Worcester City FC), Zesh Rehman (Kitchee SC), Amjad Iqbal (Bradford Park Avenue) and Nabil Aslam (AC Horsens) cost the side valuable points and their return should be the PFF’s first priority in terms of squad management.
Also, convincing youngsters such as Luke Dean (Harrogate Town) to play could prove to be fruitful gamble that might eventually lead to call-ups for prominent stars such as Adil Nabi (West Bromwich Albion), Etzaz Hussain (Molde) and Sami Malik (Eintracht Braunschweig).
Continuation of friendly games is also a must and in order to train the players more effectively such ties must be arranged in both August and September when the SAFF Cup rolls near.
Zavisa Milosavljević has been given a life-line which no one expected and the Serb needs to capitalize on it to stay on, which ultimately means winning South Asia’s most prestigious football tournament.
Names mentioned above wll bring thunderstorm on bangla n India if are brought n given an opportunity..I would say to Pff to save money from taking oak team to UK except afew n call the foreign players
That’s decent idea. But players like Kamran Khan and Samar Ishaq have been relatively solid and thus deserve a chance. Also, it wouldn’t be a good idea in terms of team morale to only play foreign stars.
muhammad rasool deserve the most and he is totally fit.
yes rasool should be there.. will have to compete with ali and hassan for starting 11..
Adil Nabi is very difficult to feature. He has senior contract with West Brom Albion and has played for England U-16 and U-17 and if i am not wrong he has scored in a U-17 world cup too. The only narrow chances to lure him into green shirts can be made with matches against at least India or tougher side.
Depends on his run with England. I personally don’t see him making the senior England team. Too much competition. So in that sense we might have a chance in the future.
Looks good. And this tournament, if in early june, will not hinder his preseason trainings. It will be a big boost for him.
Definitely.
Same is the case with Etzaz who is playing for Molde and has 3 goals in 6 starts
Calling up Etzaz is a long-term plan. We need some results to do so and a lot of efforts from the PFF.
Let Amjad Iqbal and Zesh regain their form at club and try Nabil Aslam
Best not to call Zesh. He skipped off the qualifiers, but we should definitely utilize Amjad and Nabil. And according to Hassan Bashir and Muhammad Ali, Nabil Aslam is the best defender we have right now.
agreed, we don’t need people like Zesh in our national team who just want to play international matches just to improve their CVs.
We already have Kamran Khan and Samar Ishaq. Nabil only will be good enough as he will have more chance to play from first match
If we can manage to bring in Adil Nabi and Etzaz Hussain in the team then we should not have problem in scoring goals, both are very very talented and very good attacking players.
BREAKING NEWS: HASSAN BASHIR HAS SCORED FOR HIS CLUB NORVEST FC IN DENMARK’S 3RD DIVISION SOCCER LEAGUE, IN HIS TEAM’S 4-0 VICTORY!
My dream Pakistan team for the upcoming (tentative) friendlies against India and Bangladesh would be: GK-Yousuf Butt. Defenders: Samar Ishaq, Zesh Rehman, Nabil Aslam, Shabir Khan. Midfielders: Adnan Ahmed, Yaqoob Butt, Luke Dean, Etzaz Hussain. Strikers: Adil Nabi & Hassan Bashir.
dear if u don,t mind am adding muhammad rasool,and kamran khan to your squad.
Hopeful dream.
But Etzaz and Adil are not going to be playing for Pakistan anytime soon. Kamran Khan will be involved and Hassan will play alongside Ali up-front, while there are reports claiming that Nabil might not play.
pakistani city based local football league ?????? where????????