By Our Sports Reporter
Sunday, 26 Sep, 2010
KARACHI, Sept 25: The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) has made a blunder by calling under-16 boys for team trials for the national U-15 Youth Cup, slated for December.
According to a letter, dated Aug 16, sent out to all the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Aid-27 coaches about the trials and for the registration of their teams by Aug 31, the required year of birth for the participants is mentioned as “1995” going by which the championship would become an U-16 event.
Another problem with the letters was that they were dispatched late and received by most of the coaches on or around deadline for registering their teams. Although protesting prompted the PFF to allow them a 20-day extension to do the needful, the error in the required year of birth of the players is still causing confusion among the lot many of whom have yet to register their teams even after the passage of the extended deadline.
“We had also pointed out the year of birth problem to the federation’s Director Youth Development Sheikh Siddique, the person responsible for sending out the letters. Accepting his mistake, he said that we should then call boys born in 1996 for the trials. But his saying so verbally isn’t good enough.
“We still need a correction letter signed by the PFF Secretary Col Ahmed Yar Khan Lodhi in order for us to do that. We don’t want to call fresh trials for U-15 boys now only to be told later on that the letter sent to us clearly invites boys born in the year 1995,” said one confused youth coach while speaking to Dawn on Saturday.
PFF’s director youth development was not available for comment when Dawn tried to contact him over the matter.