KARACHI: Pakistan’s national football team will compete in the inaugural FIFA ASEAN Cup in Indonesia this September, the Pakistan Football Federation confirmed Friday, ending a long wait for a Pakistani football side to earn a berth at a FIFA-organised event that has nothing to do with World Cup qualifying, Focus Pakistan reported.
FIFA extended a formal invitation to the PFF, which accepted. The tournament runs September 21 to October 6 across Indonesian venues. Pakistan land in Division 1, the top tier alongside India, hosts Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Mohsin Gilani’s Role in Securing Entry
PFF president Mohsin Gilani drove the push personally. Sources close to the federation told Focus Pakistan that Gilani spent months cultivating ties with FIFA officials in Zurich, positioning Pakistan as a commercially and geographically relevant addition to a tournament FIFA designed partly to rope in South Asia’s two largest football markets. India accepted their own invitation weeks ago. Pakistan’s confirmation Friday completes what is effectively a subcontinental double for a region FIFA has long viewed as underdeveloped relative to its population base.
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Pakistan Faces Tough Division One Challenge
In Division One, Pakistan receive the most challenging of draws to begin with. Indonesia and Thailand have both played in the 2023 AFC Asian Cup tournament. India are ranked number 124 in FIFA’s World Rankings and come into the competition in good form after playing some recent international matches. Malaysia and the Philippines have both pushed deep into ASEAN Championship knockout rounds in recent cycles. Pakistan, ranked 197th, go in as the division’s lowest-ranked side, a reality check that football analysts say the federation must treat as an opportunity rather than a problem.
The stakes for Pakistani football extend well beyond September. The national team has spent most of the past decade grinding through World Cup qualifying groups that exit early and AFC qualifying rounds that deliver little competitive development. The ASEAN Cup offers something structurally different six matches against opponents operating in a similar developmental tier, with no elimination consequence hanging over each result. That kind of fixture density, without qualification pressure, rarely comes Pakistan’s way.
Squad Preparations Begin
The PFF now has ten weeks to prepare a squad. Pakistan’s domestic league infrastructure remains thin, which means the coaching staff will draw heavily on overseas-based players several holding European passports through the diaspora eligibility rules FIFA permits. How Gilani and the technical staff convert this window into a coherent squad shapes everything that follows in Indonesia.
