Pak U16 team to miss SAFF Championship

LAHORE: Carelessness on the part of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) Normalisation Committee has deprived the country’s under-16 football team of the opportunity to feature in the Under-16 SAFF Championship which will begin in Bhutan on Friday.

Pakistan team, which had prepared well, was scheduled to fly out of Lahore for Bhutan on Tuesday but could not do so as the federation could not get NOC.

This correspondent has learnt that due to incomplete documents the NOC case could not be processed. The IPC Ministry had advised the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) to tell the PFF NC to submit complete documents so that its case for under-16 team could be processed.

The NOC is issued by the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The PFF NC sent incomplete documents which we processed and at the same time intimated NC that the Ministry of IPC will reject the case as the federation had submitted incomplete documents. And that happened. IPC Ministry told us that the Board should get complete documents from the PFF NC. We wrote to NC accordingly,” Pakistan Sports Board’s (PSB) Director General Shoaib Khosoo told 'The News'.

“When I took charge as PSB DG four months ago we sent NC the whole guidelines regarding obtaining NOC. There are 44 federations affiliated with the Board and no federation faces any problem in getting NOC except the PFF NC,” he said.

“Actually NC does not want to give the required undertaking,” Shoaib was quick to add. “We have shown the whole file to NC’s lawyer today and showed him the entire guidelines how other federations put up their NOC cases,” he said.

Asked whether Pakistan under-23 team will get NOC for the 2024 Asian Cup Qualifiers to be held in Bahrain in a few days, Shoaib said he thinks the case is with the IPC ministry.“But the documents are incomplete. NC’s lawyer came with the whole documents today and we sent the case to the IPC ministry. You know NC plays overseas players and the delay also happens because of this,” he said.