Why Pakistan Football Desperately Needs a Reboot [Analysis]

Five matches played, five defeats, 15 goals conceded, 1 goal scored.

You cannot write a more sordid tale of a sports team assembling a squad to see how far it has come – or in this case, has gone backward.

What began with a lot of optimism due to the arrival of players who were schooled in the best football academies in football, has now transformed into the doom and gloom we normally see in post-apocalyptic movies where people are fighting for scraps.

And that is exactly what Pakistan football has become.

A sorry tale of mismanagement, political rivalries, grouping, selfishness, individualistic ideals over the collective rationale, mediocrity, and unwillingness to change for the better.

The SAFF Championship finishes tomorrow for us. The game against Nepal, a dead rubber for all intents and purposes, is unlikely to be seen with that same passion we saw before Pakistan faced India a few days ago.

From the time that the team first landed in Mauritius to the time that they played their second group game of the SAFF Championship in Bengaluru, a lot has been said about the players, the coaching staff, and the management.

Local Vs. Overseas Debate

Opinions have been thrown around with a lot of discourse involving the need to change the man at the dugout and bring in a foreign coach.

Then there’s an argument that the “local” players aren’t good enough to defend the colors of this nation that has such a huge pedigree in world football (insert sarcasm).

And the arguments don’t end here because how can we have a litany of charges against a national team without journalists who decided to write on football because there wasn’t much content on cricket to work on?

The diaspora players are apparently imported because they weren’t born in Pakistan. Apparently, you need to be Pakistani enough in order to represent the national side.

But before drifting further into what could be a murky debate that has the potential to turn into a full-on brawl, let’s simply talk about some of these arguments first.

Coach Not Good Enough?

One of the biggest criticisms here is that the national team coach, Shahzad Anwar, has failed to bring the best out of a talented group of players. The manager’s tactics have been questioned.

No one really likes a defensive and sterile brand of football. On the face of it, a team that boasts talented players like Otis Khan, Harun Hamid, Abdullah Iqbal, Alamgir Ghazi, Waleed Khan, and others SHOULD NOT be playing the way it is playing.

But then again, this isn’t a team that has played together for a very long time. The players who have club duties in Europe, rarely get enough time in Pakistan while the players who play domestically don’t get enough action on the pitch to find their rhythm.

As a consequence, the coaching staff is left to pick players on short notice and is then expected to transform them into world beaters. Okay so maybe, the coach isn’t the right fit. The EASIEST way would be to bring in a foreign coach with a shiny CV.

Football Ecosystem

What happens then is that the team’s results start picking up, we make a little bit of World Cup history ourselves, qualify for the Asia Cup, humble Japan, and beat up Australia so badly that they beg the Oceania region to have them back. Our best club/team, be it WAPDA, K-Electric, or KRL features in try Asian Champions League where they humble some Saudi Arabian side that boasts a player earning 30 million euros a year.

A foreign coach might add a lot of value but that value is directly proportional to the amount of backing he receives from Pakistan’s ecosystem.

And the reality is that we do not have an ecosystem.

What we have is a scattered culture of football that is not habitable for the younger kids to become players who can stand toe to toe with their regional counterparts, let alone those from Europe, Africa, and North and South America.

To cut the long story short, a foreign coach in the current status quo, would struggle for results just as much as a local coach.

So What Do We Do?

There’s never going to be one solution for the myriad of problems football faces in the country. To start with, the grassroots structure needs a total revamp. Currently, most of the coaches at this level are still living in the past.

In order to produce good-quality players, the first step would be to train a new generation of coaches. Right now, academy players, by the time they’re ready for first-team football, still struggle with basics that have been exposed, time and time again, in international competitions.

However, it is important to note that recalibrating the grassroots level is not the end all be all. It is just part of the process. If there’s one country that badly needs a professional league, it is Pakistan. The current top-tier league simply isn’t good enough and shouldn’t even be considered a league given the amount of weeks it runs.

A league should run for at least 6 months since it will not only give players more time on the pitch but also help them get a good grasp of what life is like as a professional football player.

Of course, the league has to be extremely professional, and discussing it here will take up a lot of time. But you get the idea.

At the same time, the game needs interest from the corporate sector to grow. Without financial backing, you cannot hope to compete with the rest of the world.

We’re of course not going to go into the details of it but it is about time that the game is commercialized. On top of that, we really need to be more analytical in our approach and start using performance analysis, video analysis, and data analysis at all levels since that’s one of the main requirements of creating a sustainable environment.

While saying all that, it is true that we cannot achieve all this within a fortnight. But then again, how can the game grow if we don’t start acting now?

It is easier to blame players and the coaching staff for not doing well in important games but critical thinking allows us to understand why the national team is struggling.

The key points mentioned earlier in this article are currently some of the many reasons why that’s the case. Addressing them one by one will definitely make a difference.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be in a position to really lash out at the coaching staff for bad results because we’re so spoilt by our team winning matches so regularly.

About the Author: Taimoor is a football consultant with experience in working with teams and management agencies in North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. You can reach out to him at [email protected].

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