Lutfi focuses on qualifiers

Football coach starts training camp today.

KARACHI:

Pakistan’s football coach Tariq Lutfi will begin the country’s preparation for the World Cup qualifiers from tomorrow with 36 players taking part in a camp  to be held in Lahore.

While the focus is on the qualifiers against Bangladesh in June, Pakistan will also play two matches against Palestine – on May 24 and 27 – as part of the preparations.

The camp will start with the local players while foreign players including Danish defender Nabil Aslam, Australian Ahmad Akbar Khan, and four UK-based footballers – Atif Bashir Qureshi, Zeeshan Rehman, Adnan Farooq Ahmed and Hassan Bashir –will join the squad in June.

“This is the first step towards our preparation,” Lutfi told The Express Tribune. “I’ll be using the local players against Palestine to test their skills. Since all the foreign players are experienced, we will hold trials for them two weeks prior to the qualifiers.”

Lutfi added that he has hand-picked 18 players from the recently-concluded Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) Challenge Cup.

Stages of the camp

The coach said that the camp will be divided in three stages. The first will comprise of finding the best local talent that will play in Palestine, the second will begin in June in which Lufti intends to include senior players and the third stage will see the foreigners merged with the locals to form the best combination.

“My target is to reach the qualifiers’ second round. Pakistan’s ranking has been stuck on 171 and by performing well we can improve,” said Lutfi adding that he will resign if Pakistan lose to Bangladesh.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2011.