AFC U-14 Festival of Football 2008: Pakistan MTFA series from Saturday

The U-14 two-match soccer series will explode into action on Saturday when National U-14 team will take on Model Town Football Academy U-14 team at MTFA Ground. Both the matches will kick off at 7pm on April 26 and May 5.
Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) President Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat has approved 27 players in the build-up for the National U-14 team to appear in the AFC U-14 Festival of Football (South Asia Region) at Iran from 10-23 May 2008. Pakistan will be among nine participants with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and host Iran.
Pakistan will show their mettle at MTFA under head coach Nasir Ismail who has termed the friendly series as a positive step taken by the PFF Chief Faisal Saleh Hayat to provide the players a good exercise just ahead of next month's U14 assignments. "We will chalk out different game plans and strategies during the handy series and note our finer points and determine the blemishes before short-listing the team, knifing further five players as 22 players will be allowed at Tehran," said Nasir, the former international midfielder who is now NBP's coach.
Coach Shahzad Anwar and his goal-keeping counterpart, Muhammad Aslam, will assist him. Meanwhile, MTFA's President Mian Rizwan Ali hired the services of former Railway's international players/coaches Chaudhry Muhammad Asghar and Hafiz Anees Javaid for the coming matches." We will not take the National team lightly as 13 players of the U13 team that played brilliantly at Dhaka last year are being retained. No more rain and soccer enthusiasts will watch two exciting tussles under flood-lit system.
The rain made the lush green field bumpy, greasy, unplayable last week, but grounds-men are working on it, and the turf will be in striking shape before Saturday's tie" said Rizwan whose boys Academy is on the threshold of getting the enrolment of 600 Kids.
The two-match series will also be appealing analysis for four goalkeepers as PFF had decided to keep two of them in the final squad. "It will be watchful skirmish among Karachi's Ahsan Ullah, Yasir Ali, Daniyal and Lahore's Ghazanfar Yaseen. Ahsan has the experience of playing at Dhaka last year while others are new comers and they were picked following fine display during Sahiwal's 7th National U14 Festival of Football last February. Indeed, a tough job in my hands but the selected ones will be on merit," said Kohat-born former Pakistan and PIA keeper Aslam.