Football's sleeping giant
Football in Pakistan continues to be held back as tussles behind the scenes continue
Indeed, from March 2015 to September 2018, the Green Shirts did not play at all
Most Asian national teams have not played since 2019 but this is a fairly normal situation for Pakistan, one of the idlest international sides in the world. Indeed, from March 2015 to September 2018, the Green Shirts did not play at all.
Pakistan have played only eight games in the past five years. This is not some ruse to improve FIFA rankings as the comatose giants are, as of November 2020, 200th in the world with only nine nations below them in the standings.
Part of the reason for the inaction is due to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Combining qualification for the Asian Cup and the World Cup has reduced the number of competitive games. The format doesn’t help either with the 12 lowest-ranked teams in Asia playing off against each other home and away. Win, and you can be grouped with Japan or South Korea and enjoy eight valuable games.
But if you lose, as Pakistan did to Yemen in March 2015 and Cambodia in June 2019, then the roads to Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 (as well as the 2019 and 2023 Asian Cups) are over after just 180 minutes of action.
There hasn’t been much in the way of domestic action to fall back on either. The last games in the 14-team Pakistan Premier League, itself the first campaign for four years, finished on January 13, 2019 - almost two years ago. That title was won by Khan Research Laboratories. The team were denied entry to the AFC Cup, Asia’s second-tier cup competition, because no Pakistani team meets the required club-licence regulations.
One would hope that Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) officials would be straining every sinew to put all of this right but they have been distracted by years of infighting.
In June 2015, Faisal Saleh Hayat, an influential figure in Asian football, was relieved of his duties as PFF president, a position he had held since 2003 and was accused of embezzlement and incompetence. He went ahead and stood in an election soon after anyway and won a fourth term.
To cut a long story relatively short, the courts got involved which meant that FIFA then stepped in to ban Pakistan in October 2017. The suspension was lifted nine months later as the Lahore courts handed control back to the PFF.
Yet in December 2018 a judge ruled that there should be another election. This time Hayat refused to stand, saying it was another example of third-party interference, and instead Syed Ashfaq Hussain Shah won. The AFC refused to recognise the victory, still regarding Hayat, who was elected to the AFC’s vicepresidency in April 2019, as the rightful leader of Pakistan football.
In June 2019, FIFA decided to establish a Normalisation Committee to take control of the day-to-day management of PFF and to move towards free and transparent elections by the end of 2020.
In April, FIFA received a letter from the Pakistan government which expressed concerns that the committee, who are answerable to the Swissbased body, are not neutral.
“The simple fact that there is a Normalisation