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| March 12, 2006 | Sunday | Safar 11, 1427 |
U-14 coach leaves camp in protest
KARACHI, March 11: Pakistan Under-14 soccer coach Akhtar Mohiuddin has left the training camp in protest after a dispute with senior team coach Bahrain’s Salman Ahmed Sharida who was sent by PFF to help the local coach.
Akhtar, who has been appointed chief coach and Gohar Zaman and Shahzad Anwar his deputies, left for hometown Quetta following a dispute over giving the players rest after strenuous training.
“If we are training Under-14 players we should have take into consideration that they are too young. We should take special care of their rest. The performance of these players is based on the rest and recovery. Giving them two and half hour training without rest is cruel.
“But when I reached Lahore I found out that players were not being giving enough rest, I asked my assistants to give a day off to the players. But later things changed and I left the camp as I can’t compromise on principles,” Akhtar told Dawn on Saturday.
Akhtar said he reached the camp on March 4 while camp started on Feb 22 as he had some pressing personal commitments back home. The camp has been set up to select two Pakistan teams for Under-14 Youth Festival to be organized from April 21 to 27 in Islamabad.
Sharida, who was specially sent on the instructions of PFF chief Faisal Saleh Hayat to help Akhtar by giving useful tips, supervised the training camp for some four of five days before Akhtar joined the camp.
Akhtar said although it had been decided and agreed even by Sharida that there would be no training the next day, PFF director technical Lt-Col Mujahid Ullah Khan telephoned Gohar and told to have training sessions next day since Sharida did not feel it appropriate to give rest to the players.
“Sharida had accepted that players need rest. But the next day Mujahid rang Gohar asking him to hold training sessions because Sharida says so. In that situation, I did didn’t feel like continuing and left the camp on March 9,” Akhtar said.
Sharida refused to comment on the issue saying “I was sent there to help which I did and I don’t want to comment on this matter which I think comes under PFF’s domain.”
Surprisingly, Mujahid drew a blank on this situation and denied that Akhtar left the camp in protest.
“He (Akhtar) has left because of his family problems. There was no such issue,” Mujahid said but evaded the question and did not comment when asked whether he gave Gohar directives to continue the training without any rest the next day.
Grassroots soccer in Pakistan now faces a precarious situation since there is no experienced coach present at the camp which is being run by Gohar and Shahzad who have left international soccer hardly a few years ago.
It is the first experience for the two former players as coach while Akhtar says trials are scheduled in first week of April.
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