SOCCA World Cup: Pakistan goes down fighting against Germany

Karachi: Despite an improved performance, Pakistan was beaten 3-2 by Germany in six-a-side SOCCA World Cup being played at Crete in Greece.

According to information made available here, Pakistan fought well against defending champions, but Germany ended as victorious because of the experience.

The defending champions got an early lead when J. Ademeit netted the ball in 14th minute of the match. However, the game was leveled 1-1 with young Mohammad Waheed scoring in the 22nd minute.

However, soon after scoring the goal, Mohammad Waheed was sent off for two minutes as he took his jersey off in celebration which caused him a yellow card.

Germany took advantage of a-player-short Pakistan as N. Kuhle scored another goal for the defending Champions within two minutes to Pakistan’s equalizer.

D. Reinold scored third goal for Germans in 37th minute. Four minutes later, Pakistan scored another goal as Waheed netted the ball for the second time in the game.

As it was 3-2 in Germany’s favor, Pakistan made some brilliant efforts to score another equalizer but all efforts were in vain as none of the player could send the ball into the goal.

Pakistan was earlier beaten by Romania and Slovenia by heavy margins of 5-1 and 5-1, respectively.

Team’s head coach Kevin Reeves expressed satisfaction on team’s performance against Germany.

“It was an amazing performance by the boys. I am so proud of them. For me, it was best here from the Pakistan team,” he said.

“As we all know that we faced couple of issues before coming here due to visa problems and we had to call other guys to join in and they played absolutely fantastic today. These guys are on track to be a good side,” said the former England footballer.

He hoped that team will repeat the same show of dare and passion against Hungary on Thursday.

Gohar Zaman, former Pakistan player and team’s assistant coach, said that Germany is currently defending champion of Socca world cup and Pakistan played superb game against them.

“We were just unlucky, once our goal keeper was yellow carded, once another player was yellow carded, if we were not carded, I think we would have leveled the match 2-2,” Zaman said.

“As a coach I am happy to see my players doing this well,” he concluded.