KARACHI, April 30: Former national football team captain Ali Nawaz will be amongst four former Pakistan internationals who will be awarded the AFC Distinguished Service Awards on Friday, a day after Asia’s football governing body holds its presidential elections.

The distinguished awards are handed out to individuals from across the continent every year for their service to the game, both at national as well as international level, and Ali Nawaz along with Qazi Mohammad Asif will be the third and fourth Pakistanis to claim the ‘Gold Service’ award which requires three decades of service to football.

Before them, former player Ghulam Abbas Baloch and former referee Ahmed Ali were the recipients of the ‘Gold Service’ award.

“I’m extremely grateful to the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) for nominating my name for the prestigious award,” Ali Nawaz, captain of the team in 1974, told Dawn from Lahore on Tuesday.

“It’s a great honour for me as it justifies my 40-year service to football in the country,” the former PFF vice-president, who also holds the President’s Pride of Performance, said.

Ali Nawaz, who was due to fly to Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday for the awards, added: “The fact that players from Pakistan are being awarded by the AFC will only serve in encouraging youngsters taking up the game.

“The AFC has continued to help Pakistan over the years and hopefully their support will produce better results in the future.

“The latest result of their support was the performance of the Under-14 team in the qualifiers of the inaugural AFC U-14 championships.”

Pakistan finished second in Group ‘B’, and suffered just a solitary loss to group winners Iran.

Qazi Asif, meanwhile, starred for the national team from 1981 to 1985 and is currently the president of the Pakistan Football Referee Association (PFRA) and was a member of the FIFA refereeing panel from 1988 to 1996.

Other recipients of the ‘Gold Service’ award include Oman Football Association (OFA) technical advisor Abdul Rahim Al Hajri and Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) senior vice-president Abdus Salam Murshedy.

The two other recipients of the AFC award from Pakistan are Haroon Yousuf (Silver Service) and Tanveer Ahmed (Bronze Service).

Haroon captained the national team from 1990 to 2004 while Tanveer was Pakistan’s first-choice centre-back from 1993 to 2008.

Tanveer presently serves as the assistant coach for Wapda.

The awards will be handed over at the AFC Ordinary Congress, which follows Thursday’s AFC Extraordinary Congress which will see polls for the continental body’s next chief.

The new chief faces an uphill battle to restore the Asian football governing body’s tarnished image and reputation left by its disgraced former boss Mohamed Bin Hammam.

United Arab Emirates football chief Yousuf Al Serkal, Saudi Arabian Hafez Al Medlej, Thailand’s Worawi Makudi and Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain are running to succeed Bin Hammam, banned from football for life by FIFA for bribery in 2011.

Shaikh Salman, backed by Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) president Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, is widely seen as a frontrunner for the presidential race.

As far as Pakistan — and South Asia — is concerned, Worawi Makudi has been campaigning hard to get votes from the region. The Thai has already secured eleven votes in the election from the Southeast Asian region.

But the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) hasn’t declared its support for any candidate.

“We will see which way the wind blows,” SAFF president Kazi Salahuddin said. “We have not yet decided whom to support. We’ll have to see the final list, think what would be good for South Asian football.”

According to James M. Dorsey, a football blogger and senior fellow at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Al-Serkal is the ideal candidate with the others having no reform agenda.

“Al-Serkal is the only candidate who has laid out a program that addresses the fundamental problems wracking the AFC, but he lacks a track record of pushing for reform,” he wrote on his blog.