PFF calls national players again [The News]

Sports Correspondent – The News

KARACHI: Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) has called the national players for a training camp in Lahore from June 1, after they had been sent home for rest only last week following the tour of Palestine.

 “Yes, we have called the players for the camp which will start from June 1. It will be of around three weeks,” PFF secretary Col Ahmed Yar Lodhi told ‘The News’ on Sunday.

 A source told this correspondent that Pakistan might tour South Korea for training, but Lodhi did not confirm this. “No such tour is being planned,” he said. “We are yet to negotiate any such thing with South Korea. If anything like this is done, it will be possible only after the FIFA Congress in June. But we do intend to send the team to India in August,” the official said. Around nine players of the country’s top team Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) will also be part of the camp which will be supervised by Pakistan’s Bahraini coach Mohammed Shamlan.

 Saddam Hussain, Bilawal-ur-Rehman, Mehmood Khan, Salman, Saqib Hanif and Tanveer Mumtaz are among the KRL players who have been called to the camp.

 KRL’s star players Kaleemullah and Mohammad Aadil are also on the coach’s radar for the Asian Games. The two are currently serving Kyrgyzstan’s Dordoi Bishkek on loan. “Building a team is a long process and Shamlan is fully focussed on the job,” Lodhi said.

 “The coach wants to see some boys again. It is expected that around 30 players will attend the camp,” he said.

 PFF is preparing the boys for the Asian Games, scheduled to be held in Incheon in South Korea from September 19 to October 4.

 Pakistan team had returned only the other day from Palestine after featuring in the Al-Nakba International Football tournament where they finished third among four outfits.

 Lodhi said that in the latest part of the camp, they would also invite coaches of Premier League sides for a workshop so that they might exchange their experiences with each other.