Future of Pakistani football

THE ongoing World Cup has drawn greater attention to the state of football in Pakistan. Some of this attention is also down to Pakistan’s highly laudable victory in the recently concluded Diamond Jubilee tournament — the first tournament victory for the team in decades. Snapping a 900-day drought, Pakistan was able to beat higher-ranked opposition across three straight matches.

Going by online spaces, there are plenty of people emotionally (and otherwise) invested in the growth of football in the country. For some long-time football fans, such as myself, the Pakistani team’s performance matters for a host of cultural reasons. The recent decline of the cricket team and disillusionment with the way that sport is managed leave a vacuum for sporting representation. But beyond the mere partisan or tribal affinity of fandom, football offers other interesting social prospects.

It is a truly global sport, offering growth and scale for athletes at a level no other sport does. Domestically, it has the potential of being a truly national sport in Pakistan, with some of the best players in the country emerging from the so-called geographic peripheries.

The contrast with cricket is apparent, where, apart from recent intake from KP, cricket remains confined to tier-1 and tier-2 cities in Punjab and the metropolis of Karachi. This is partly a function of the diverging resource requirements in the two sports. Football, at the recreational level, requires merely an open space and a ball. Cricket, on the other hand, has had to adapt at the recreational level and create an entirely different form of the game (tape-ball) to thrive in what remains a poor and space-starved country. The disconnect between the recreational and professional levels are thus much higher.

Domestically, football has the potential of being a truly national sport in the country.

What is the pathway towards a more promising future for football in Pakistan? Experts and enthusiasts continue to deliberate on the matter. Long-time independent initiatives, most notably Football Pakistan (now in its 23rd year of coverage) and more recent digital platforms like On the Mic, have analysed the state of the game and what ails it in considerable detail. The following paragraphs reproduce some of their excellent insights.

There is broad consensus that the sport’s governance remains a mess, starting from the football federation and running through the local structures tasked with managing the sport. Little surprise then that FIFA had placed the PFF in abeyance for almost 11 years.

With some semblance of governance restored, two questions are central to the conversation about football’s future. The first is around the format of the sport domestically. Running a league will drive the sport’s growth, sustain football organisations, and give footballers a regular income. While there is broad agreement on running a league, the exact model remains contested (club-based or franchise-based being the main debate).

The PFF continues to voice its support for a league project but progress on this front remains anaemic. Instead, there seems to be a penchant to chase photo-ops with world football officials or fly-in former superstars in for PR purposes, or promise outlandish things (such as an international stadium in Lyari) rather than decisive action on the league or on much-needed upgrading of existing infrastructure.

The second issue dominating the conversation, fuelled in part by a recent on-air comment by seasoned analyst Rehan-ul-Haq, is the fate of diaspora players and their role in the future of the Pakistan team. The current national team, as it stands, has drawn a segment from the diaspora pool reportedly at the insistence of the manager/head coach. Among the sport’s administrators, though, there is a sizable faction that opposes their inclusion on some misplaced grounds of equity and fairness vis-à-vis domestically-based players.

As several have pointed out, the reality of this position has less to do with concerns about domestic player welfare, which, as the Football Pakistan team points out, would be far better served by a functioning league that offers regular playing time and remuneration. Instead, this nativism against the diaspora has more to do with the local political economy of bigwigs and bosses who manage the sport domestically and the patronage chains they run with players and local clubs.

The simple truth is that for the team’s long-term viability and competitiveness, diaspora/ foreign-origin players are a necessity. Every successful team from the developing world continues to demonstrate this pathway. Pakistan is in no place to be an exception.

The World Cup offers many examples of this pathway. Curacao’s domestic population is 150,000. Yet it’s built a squad of foreign-born players strong enough to make it to the World Cup (a fate that a country like Pakistan with 1,500 times the population and a much bigger diaspora has never come even marginally close to). Fourteen of the 26-member Cabo Verde team, who held one of the tournament’s favourites, Spain, to a nil-nil draw in the opening round of matches, were born outside the country. The top-ranked African team, Morocco fielded a starting 11 born outside the country.

Roughly a quarter of all players at the World Cup were born in places other than the country they’re representing. Around 100 players, nearly eight per cent of the total squad strength at the tournament, were born in France alone.

The proportion of diaspora representation is obviously higher for poorer and low-population countries. It boosts on-field performance, raises the team’s profile, and gives domestic players better exposure when they play alongside their diaspora counterparts. For the Pakistan team, this should be a no-brainer given the sheer size of the diaspora and the fact that it is present in several major footballing countries (like the UK). One can only hope that the sport’s administrators too come around to this fact sooner rather than later.

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.

X: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2026 ...