KARACHI: The Pakistan Football Federation Normalisation Com­mittee will have a fourth different chairman at its helm with Saud Azim Hashmi now tasked to complete the long, drawn-out process of elections of the country’s football governing body.

The FIFA appointed PFF NC on Monday released a short statement — which was later deleted — that Saud will replace Haroon Malik as the chairman with the other members — Shahid Khokhar and Haris Azmat — remaining unchanged.

Haroon will step down on Feb 15, which was the the deadline for the eighth extension given to the PFF NC since its appointment in September 2019.

The mandate of the PFF NC was further extended to July 31 after the PFF was suspended by FIFA following the refusal of the PFF Congress to accept the constitutional amendments proposed by the global football body ahead of the presidential election.

Saud, who follows Humza Khan, Munir Sadhana and Haroon as the NC chairman, will now be tasked with convincing the congress members into accepting the constitutional amendments and finally holding the PFF elections.

The holding of the elections are conditional to the suspension being lifted but in a surprising move, the PFF NC announced that Pakistan will be unable to feature in the final round of qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup.

The Asian Football Confederation had told the PFF that Pakistan would be “considered to be withdrawn from the competition should the suspension on PFF not be lifted by March 4.”

Pakistan are due to face Syria in their opening Group ‘E’ match on March 25.

The PFF NC’s announcement of immediate withdrawal, stating Pakistan “will be unable to participate”, points to deeper issues with FIFA having suspended funding due to an audit issue since last year.

Last month, a FIFA spokesperson told Dawn that the world’s football governing body was “in contact with the PFF normalisation committee on the matter”.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2025