Shahrukh Sohail, Chief Editor, Islamabad
The Pak Shaheens flopped emphatically as they had a man sent off in the first half and were spanked with four goals by the hosts in Surabaya.
Coach Shamlan, who has ignored senior and foreign-based players, for some time fielded a very youthful line-up against Indonesia’s senior side which also included naturalized Indonesian striker Cristian Gonzales, who is originally from Uruguay.
Subsequently, the Shaheens struggled and conceded an early goal on the 12th minute through Gonzales with Pakistan’s defence looking very frail.
PAF’s Mansoor Khan looked lively had a superb try from 35 yards but the shot hit the cross bar with no one there to hit the rebound. Meanwhile, goalkeeper Ehsanullah had his work cut out and kept out the Indonesians with all his might.
The hosts enjoyed most of the possession and scored their 2nd in the 16th minute as Pakistan crumbled under the pressure of the Red and White. And things went bad to worse, when Saddam Hussain was sent off for a double-footed, studs up challenge on the goalkeeper.
Following that Pakistan’s performance went to the doldrums, with Indonesia very unlucky not to have gotten more goals in the first half.
After the breather, Mansoor Khan had a great chance on the 50th minute to pull one back but despite beating the keeper, he wasn’t able to find the back of the net. Coach Shamlan made several changes in the second half, with goalkeeper Saqib Hanif and Ashfaquddin coming on.
Saqib was tested early as Indonesia converted a penalty on the 58 minutes before missing a couple of chances to finally put the icing on the cake with a late fourth goal on the 87th minute.
I watched the last 60 minutes of this match, and it was horrible. Very poor defending, and a lot of wasteful long balls from the defense and keeper. Reminds me of the style of play during Sharida’s reign. Very poor. Unfortunately, we no longer have players such as Naveed Akram to make the difference in a match.
There were three or four positives for me in this match. Mansoor Khan is a very promising player. He is a true striker. Good physique and good work rate, MashaAllah. In the absence of foreign players, Kaleem and Mansoor should be the first choice strikers. Mansoor is actually a better striker than Kaleem, who is more of an attacking midfielder.
Abdul Salam (#9) showed potential. He has good physique and excellent tackling. He is also decent on the ball. Again, in the absence of foreign players, he can be the defensive midfielder allowing Saddam to play a more attacking role.
Mehmood Khan looked good on the ball. He tried to play some nice balls through, but it usually did not work out. He’s a good option to have on the bench.
Ahsanullah again showed good promise. He controls his box and is quick off his line to charge the ball.
The midfield and forward line actually wasn’t too bad. The problem was with the back line. They defended horribly and were wasteful going forward.
Pakistan played their best football in the past five years during Zavisa’s reign. He should be brought back in. If he was fired for losing a friendly with Afghanistan 3-0, then Shamlan should also be fired for losing this friendly against Indonesia so badly. Indonesia is not a better team than Afghanistan. We are back to zero.
Agree with you.
But have to say, the best football played in the last 4-5 years was not under Zavisa but under Shamlan last year during the SAFF Cup and Peace Cup (Most people have not seen this).
Backline is just atrocious. You can expect to go anywhere this, no matter how many friendlies they play.
Another point, Zavisa was paid, Shamlan is for free. So PFF will never sack, even if the team goes down the drain.
umm, i think instead of critisizing we should look forward for tournaments in which we face asias top teams, what we do every year is that play few friendlies n thats enough. thats not the way football works, we need experience, for that we need to play against experienced player, if we give chance to our british or danish based players we might see a good result, try to have sponsorship we dont even have a proper kit no specific brand or company, they should be encouraged, we can take Iran as our role model in football.
We are not criticizing just for the sake of it. It’s constructive. Shamlan’s continued ignorance of foreign-based players is destroying Pakistani football.
Yes, the best football was played in the last SAFF Cup, but that was a team which was set up and trained by Zavisa and managed by Shehzad Anwar rather than Shamlan. When Shamlan really started his work, things went downhill, mostly due to his policies.
Did he ignored foreign based players for sometime?
He has been since last October after the Peace Cup.
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