JEDDAH, April 6: Pakistan’s chances of reaching the quarterfinal stage in football event of the 1st Islamic Countries Solidarity Games have increased as Kuwait, one of the strong team of pool ‘D’, withdrew from the competition.

Pakistan, Morocco and Malaysia are now left in pool ‘D’ and the former has to beat either Malaysia or Morocco to qualify for the next round.

Pakistan will play all its matches in Taif and the team had already left for the city soon after it landed at Jeddah on Monday.

Another strong team Cameroon has also pulled out of the contest leaving 14 countries to vie for top honours.

Football is the only discipline among the total of 16 sports included in the games which matches will be played in all the four cities —- Jeddah, Makkah, Madina and Taif.

Meanwhile, chef de mission of the Pakistan contingent Senator Zafar Iqbal said that the arrangements were being improved and the problems of holding practice sessions for the teams were being sorted out.

“The teams staying in Jeddah, Taif and Makkah have started training sessions but no practice sessions were held in Madina”, he said.

“Basketball and karate teams reached Madina on Tuesday and hopefully they will start practicing from Thursday”, he said.

He said that most of the players reached Madina late because they first performed “Umra” and that was the main reason for the late start of training sessions.

He admitted that the Pakistani officials were facing problems in settling down but was hopeful that the situation would improve before the start of the competitions.

A couple of swimmers did not attend the training session in the morning but they were present in the afternoon session.

Coach Bashir Ahmed said that all the players were fit.

A couple of of them missed the morning session because they were not feeling well.

Meanwhile, the opening ceremony of the games is being held at King Abdul Aziz Stadium Makkah on Friday.

But the organizers have not yet issued details of the programme about the event. We hopefully will release the programme on Wednesday evening”, a spokesman told Dawn.

However, the organizing committee has claimed that the opening ceremony would be an attractive one.

The committee has also instructed all the participants of the March-past to ensure their presence at the venue till 6pm, two hours before the ceremony. Meanwhile, a group of Pakistani journalists visited Al Ittihad Club, the venue of the volleyball event and GPYW Club pool the venue for the swimming competitions, both situated in Jeddah.

The organizers have made the classification of 57 Islamic countries in three languages Arabic, French and English.

Pakistan is placed in English speaking group. Kyrgystan, Nigeria and Albania, however, had withdrawn their entries.

According to the official figure, hosts are fielding the biggest contingent of 370 members followed by Iran who has 243.

Algeria has the third biggest contingent with 238 members. Syria (196), Sudan (193), Egypt (189), Morocco (175), Malaysia (158) and Pakistan (140) are the other biggest participants of the games.

The war-effected Iraq also sent a contingent of 131 members.