KARACHI: Pakistan are likely to get a rare opportunity to play opposition outside Asia in next year’s FIFA World Series with team’s possible participation coming under discussion when FIFA chief Gianni Infantino met recently-elected Pakistan Football Federation president Mohsen Gilani at the FIFA Executive Football Summit.

The summit, held on the sidelines of the ongoing FIFA Club World Cup in the United States, was the first event attended by Mohsen since he won the long-awaited elections of the PFF last month and football development plans for the country were also discussed during his meeting with Infantino in Miami, according to the FIFA website.

“We touched upon key topics such as the development of the women’s football team and the men’s team potentially participating in next year’s FIFA Series,” Infantino was quoted as saying.

The PFF has been riddled with crisis and controversy since 2015 and was under a FIFA-appointed Normalisation Committee for six years before elections were finally held.

That has impacted the national team, which despite creating history by winning a FIFA World Cup qualifier for the first time in 2023, has found opportunities to play sides outside of Asia hard to come by.

Over the last two years, the national team has only played matches in the second round qualifying for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and is currently featuring in the third round of qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup.

Head coach Stephen Constantine’s pleas for arranging friendly fixtures for the side in order to aid preparations for the qualifiers largely went unheard.

However, the FIFA World Series offers a fresh window of opportunity. Last year’s pilot edition saw 24 teams from six confederations take part across seven series with all inter-confederation fixtures in six of them being the first international meeting between the sides.

They included Cambodia, the side Pakistan beat to create World Cup qualifying history, facing Equatorial Guinea and Guyana and Mongolia taking on Azerbaijan and Tanzania.

Matches in FIFA World Series will likely come well after Pakistan’s Asian Cup qualifying campaign ends, with the national team’s chances of making it to the continent’s premier tournament looking slim after two straight defeats.

But World Series matches will likely help the team gain some competitive action before they embark on qualifying for the 2030 World Cup.

Infantino added that his meeting with Mohsen was aimed at understanding the PFF chief’s football development plans and “how FIFA can continue to support the sport in his country”.

The FIFA president hoped that Mohsen’s vast experience of working in the game will take football forward in Pakistan.

“President Gilani brings significant experience and football management know-how to the role, and I look forward to seeing our game take positive strides under his leadership,” Infantino said.

Infantino had met Pakistan’s interior minister and Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Mohsin Naqvi in Washington with the latter stating on social media platform X that he had “extended a warm invitation to visit Pakistan, which he [the FIFA chief] graciously accepted and promised to undertake soon”.

The PFF said in a media release following Mohsen’s meeting with Infantino that the FIFA chief “accepted an official invitation to visit Pakistan, with the visit to be planned at a mutually agreed-upon date”.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2025