March 20, 2007	Tuesday	Safar 30, 1428

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LAHORE, March 19: President, Pakistan Football Federation, Faisal Saleh Hayat has said that Pakistan will not miss any international football tournament and efforts are on to arrange soccer series with many countries.

“Pakistan will definitely take part in the qualifiers of 19th World Cup which will be held in South Africa in 2010,” said Faisal while talking to APP here on Monday.

The draw for the qualifying round of the Soccer World Cup will take place in Durban on November 23 and will be broadcast live to 200 countries. From November 27, Durban will play host to a series of meetings by officials from FIFA to discuss preparations for the tournament and representatives, national team coaches are expected to attend the event in Durban.

“We will not miss any soccer event of FIFA or AFC as was the case in the past when previous PFF set-ups never ensured the participation in 1995 SAF Games at Chennai and Sydney Olympic 2000 Qualifiers.

In order to improve your play and to keep up pace with other 206 members of FIFA, it is essential that Pakistan appeared in every assignments of FIFA and AFC,” said Faisal.

The PFF Chief praised the efforts of AFC in launching a new event called ‘Challenge Cup’ which will help the Asian teams to test their status for coming FIFA events. It's first edition was held last year at Bangladesh and the second edition is being planned for Chinese Taipei next year.”

The newly-introduced event will strengthen lower-division national teams of Asia and the AFC gave the event more value as the winners of the 2008 competition will qualify for the Asian Cup 2011.

The 17 countries picked for AFC challenge Cup, alongwith Pakistan, need time to catch up and close the gap on the more advanced nations in Asia. It is hoped that the new competition will create awareness about football in these countries and accelerate the game's development there. —APP