KRL maintain supremacy to win football league

Lutfi’s team lost just one match in the league en route the title.


Natasha Raheel December 29, 2011

KARACHI: KRL played out a goal-less draw against Wapda in Islamabad yesterday but wrapped up the Pakistan Premier Football League with a record margin of 20 points.

It finished as their best season – the team lost just one game out of the 30 it played – as KRL maintained a consistent gap between them and the trailing teams, finishing well ahead of Afghan FC (57 points) – the only team to beat the winners. With 24 wins in the league, KRL bagged the gold medal and the Rs 700,000 prize-money.

The Rawalpindi-based club scored 54 goals and conceded just nine, finishing ahead of Afghan FC there as well, who scored 52 while letting in 24. Last year’s winners Wapda, following the stalemate, finished fourth, five points behind Army.

Consistency the key for KRL

KRL emerged as one of the top league teams in 2004, managing to finish in the top-three along with Wapda every year since then. They ended as the runners-up last season but a change of coach,  also led to a change of fortunes.

“We’ve just created history and that makes me proud,” KRL coach Tariq Lutfi told The Express Tribune. “No team has ever won the league with such a huge margin. My concern now is to maintain this form as everyone would want to bring us down. Staying on top is more difficult then getting there.”

KRL also completed a hat-trick of Pakistan National Football Challenge Cup this year, a knock-out competition featuring 16 other clubs.

Lutfi the reason behind our win: KRL captain

Meanwhile, according to KRL captain and the best player of the league Samar Ishaq, the top spot arrived with a change of tactics.

“Lutfi brought with him a new style of football,” said Ishaq. “He introduced new tactics and many opponents were surprised with our approach. Instead of playing long balls and employing kick-and-run technique, we stuck to short passes and that has improved our performance drastically.”

Afghan FC’s Jadeed Khan finished as the leagues highest-scorer with 22 goals while Jaffar Khan was named the best goal-keeper. Police and Pel were relegated from the PPFL to Pakistan Football Federation League.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30th, 2011.

COMMENTS (2)

HH | 12 years ago | Reply

It's so unfortunate that despite having a full fledge league, even Geo super doesn't give it proper coverage.....I think PFF should also focus on bringing good sponsors so that the league can be aired on tv.

HH | 12 years ago | Reply

short passes instead of long balls...that's barcelona-style football...what they call tikki-taka..

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