KARACHI, June 18: Four days after challenging the national football team to a match at Karachi’s KMC Ground, the Save Football Movement (SFM) has formally named their squad for the match.

The team, according to SFM President Faisal Baloch and Chairman Akhlaq Baloch, has been training regularly at the KMC Ground situated off Nishtar Road, next to the Federal Urdu University. “We are also giving away a prize of Rs 1 million to the winning team,” said Abdul Rauf Baloch, Nazim UC-10, who is also SFM’s general-secretary, “but we have yet to receive a response from the Pakistan Football Federation [PFF].”

While registering their grievances with the PFF for ignoring boys from Lyari in selection of the national team, Ahmed Jan, in charge of the KMC Ground said: “Football in Pakistan started from Lyari in the 1960s. Back then the big matches played in East Pakistan had only two or three boys from that region and around 16 to 17 from Lyari alone. It was a time when a player of the calibre of the President’s Pride of Performance Ali Nawaz would be offered Rs 10,000 per season. Known forwards Maula Bux Gotai and left-in Abdul Jabbar even got two-year contracts from Turkey.”

According to the UC-10 Nazim, nothing has changed insofar the talent in Karachi is concerned.

“There is still as much talent in Karachi as there was yesterday. The only thing that has changed is that the PFF, after getting affiliation from FIFA, has been giving our boys a cold shoulder. They are not even taken in by the departments here but this match will prove that they are even better than the national side. The federation just needs to be reminded before getting players from the UK that there are talented players in Lyari too,” he said.

The SFM has warned that they along with all the lovers of football in Karachi will gather to burn effigies of PFF officials outside the Karachi Press Club if they go ahead with hiring of a foreign coach for the national team when there are so many talented coaches right here in Pakistan. “We therefore nominate Ali Nawaz, Zafar Iqbal Baloch who also coached the PIA team besides remaining captain of the national team, Hasan Baloch, who coaches the KESC football team and Siddique Shaikh, the former Pakistan team coach who also coached the Habib Bank team for the responsibility,” said Akhlaq Baloch.

When contacted for his reaction regarding the challenge match and the local coaching nominations, PFF’s general-secretary Lt Col Ahmed Yar Lodhi dismissed the idea as absurd. “You don’t go around challenging the national side through newspaper announcements without even sending us the team profile. Besides, it is not right to say that we are ignoring the Karachi boys. We select players on merit from the clubs as well as through open trials.

“Instead of reminiscing about past heroics, why don’t they tell us what they have done of late. There was a national camp before the SAFF championship, where were the UC-10 boys then?” asked Col Lodhi.

On the matter of foreign coaches, he said: “All of the teams competing in the recently concluded SAFF championship had foreign coaches with the exception of Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Maldives team has improved so much within the two years of training with a foreign coach that they won the championship. Don’t the SFM people want the Pakistan team to improve too?”

The challengers’ squad: Orangzeb (captain), Akbar Ali (vice captain), Akhtar Ali, Naseer Ahmed, Sajid Hussain (goal keeper), Majid Hussain, Abdul Razzak, Mussa, Ahmed Ali, Akram Baloch, Zafar Majeed, Mohammad Bakhsh, Baba Nur Mohammad, Mohammad Idrees, Shahid Salim, Sameen Ahmed, Hashimi, Akhlaq Baloch (coach).