[ad_1]
LAHORE: After a gap of more than three years, the Pakistani football team will launch its activities next month by keeping an eye on a place in the World Cup football in 2026. Currently ranked 201 in the FIFA rankings, Pakistan will play the next Asian Games next month, where they will face the best teams in the region. According to the draws announced Friday by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), Pakistanis are placed in Group D for the Asian Games football event that will be held in Indonesia from August 15th. Japan recently played in the FIFA World Cup, while Vietnam is ranked at a hundred places above Pakistan. This will be the U-23 tournament in which teams are allowed to line up three players out of 23.
The Asian Games in Jakarta will be the first appearance of Pakistan's football after more than three years. The country played in the pre-qualifiers of the Football World Cup against Yemen in March 2015, after which a fight broke out between the two factions that led to the suspension of FIFA by FIFA. The suspension prevented the Pakistani team from acting
Meanwhile, the Pakistani Football Federation called the development of a fresh start and was aiming for a place in the World Cup football in 2026 "Almost three and a half years ago, when PFF was forced out of business for the next 3 years, we easily beat teams like Afghanistan and India. PFF's efforts to improve the level of play have been eliminated, "said Faisal Saleh Hayat, president of the Pakistan Football Federation. "Now that the PFF has made a fresh start, there is an opportunity to see Pakistan among the 48 teams, who will participate in the World Cup in the next eight years," he said. Hayat added that if the government and the nation supported football, it was quite possible for Pakistan to participate in the 2026 FIFA World Cup to be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Published in the Daily Times, July 7 th 2018.
[ad_2]
Source link
