KARACHI, Nov 6: With the World Cup pre-qualifying home game against Kyrgyzstan hardly three weeks away, Pakistan soccer officials are yet to finalize the date, squad and the coach.

What would have been the most important competition for any football playing country, seemed to be not more than a friendly game for Pakistan Football Federation (PFF).

While the PFF secretary, Arshad Lodhi, says that the match would be played either on Nov 28 or 29, the self-appointed chairman of the PFF competition committee, Ghulam Abbas Baloch thinks it would be played on Nov 27 or 28.

Both the officials agreed the encounter would take place at People’s Sports Complex in Karachi.

However, why preparations for the game have started hardly three weeks before competition is a mystery. Usually, FIFA or Asian Football Confederation (AFC), intimate the respective federations four or six months before any event.

“It is just a pre-qualifying match and not the qualifying round, therefore, we have started our preparations now,” the secretary PFF said but added he was not sure when the match would be played.

“The match will be played either on Nov 28 or 29,” Arshad said without giving the reason for being unsure about the date for the clash.

Abbas, who said he had been asked by the PFF to organize the event, said: “Earlier, the game was to be played either on Nov 21 or 22. The date was changed and now I think it will be played on Nov 27 or 28.

Arshad said Tariq Lutfi, who had already been involved in the selection and training of Under-20 squad for Asian championship qualifiers in Bangladesh this month, and SAF Games squad, would probably supervise the senior camp in Karachi.

It is incomprehensible why Tariq is active in selecting the Under-23 squad for the SAF Games since he had refused to train the same squad earlier, saying he is senior team coach.

Arshad failed to elaborate when asked how a single coach would handle all the three squads for the forthcoming important events.

Meanwhile, PFF begins to select the senior squad from Friday with chief selector Col Yunus Changezi starting the selection at Steel Mills football ground.

Yunus said all the departments and provinces had been asked to send their players for the trials and added he had planned to announce the squad on Nov 9, while training starts the next day.

Pakistan had scored their first-ever goal and a point under AFC-provided coach John Layton, following a 3-3 draw at Sri Lanka in the qualifying round game for 2002 World Cup co-hosted by South Korea and Japan.