January 20, 2007	Saturday	Zilhaj 29, 1427

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KARACHI, Jan 19: While Pakistan’s build-up for Olympic football qualifiers is yet to take off due to the unavailability of probables who are busy playing in national league, coach Salman Ahmed Sharida will join the camp on Sunday after a mysterious absence of six days.

“I spoke to Salman Sharida on the phone and he has informed that he will be here day after tomorrow (Sunday). We hope he will join us on Sunday,” camp commandant Irfan Khan Niazi said on Friday.

Sharida went straight to his home country Bahrain after the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. Irfan says that Sharida is in Bahrain to see his ailing mother and is perhaps waiting for green signal from the Bahraini authorities for taking up his assignment.

There are, however, reports that Sharida is reluctant to join Pakistan camp because of some unknown reasons and the national side might have a new coach in place quite soon. Pakistan football for the last several years has been plagued by mischievous elements trying to remove the coach and take charge.

Sharida’s services have been lent to Pakistan by the Bahrain government absolutely free of cost. He joined Pakistan squad in October 2005, weeks before South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) championship in Karachi.

Mohammad Rasheed and goalkeeping coach Mohammad Afzal are supervising the training camp in Sharida’s absence. However, it is not only Sharida’s absence which is causing problems, lack of players’ strength is also creating hurdles in the training camp because of the ongoing league matches.

Although the camp commandant says strength of the probables has reached to 34 from 18 on Jan 15, the fact is that at times one could hardly find any camp trainees having sessions in the evening.

“We have 34 players out of 37 called up and there is no problem regarding the strength of the probables. But we cannot have sessions in the evening when there are four matches being played at a time as most of our players are representing their respective departments in the league,” Irfan said.

It may be a petty issue for the team officials and the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF), but it is no doubt a big blow to Pakistan’s preparations for the all-important event.

Pakistan are scheduled to announce their squad on Jan 22 or 23 to leave for Singapore on Feb 3 where they play the away match on Feb 7. Pakistan play their home match against Singapore on Feb 14 in Peshawar.

According to Irfan, the probables had not been given any break since the camp started on Feb 15 at Pakistan Navy Sports Complex and Hockey Club of Pakistan as it was not possible to have regular training sessions because of lack of strength for drills and tactical sessions in the evening.

“We can’t give the players enough rest and have to continue training when there is no training session in the evening because of unavailability of players. When there are national league matches here, we only have 12 or 13 players in the camp. This gives us no option to continue training without a break.”

Irfan said players might be given a day’s rest but only when the league reaches a stage when there would be less matches and more players available for drills.

Events such as Olympic qualifying round matches, are always planned well ahead and it is surprising why PFF didn’t make players’ presence at national camp mandatory. PFF should have either given a break in league or asked departments to release the players for the national camp.

Now with hardly four or five days to announce the squad and barely a week or so in hand for training, the qualifying round matches would be nothing but a formality in the present scenario.

PFF president Faisal Saleh Hayat was not available for comments on the issues despite several attempts to contact him.