KHYBER: The stands at the football ground in Landi Kotal along with the rooftops of the surrounding buildings are over-occupied by cheering spectators as rival teams vie for a berth in the final of the ongoing annual football tournament.

The two-month competitions among rival teams have now become intense while the enthusiasm of spectators has also grown immensely with many among them having taken long leave from their far-off work places to watch their favourite players and teams in action.

Arranged by a little known local sports organisation, Khyber Sports Club, entirely on self-help basis, the tournament, which was participated by more than 60 teams, was started on August 14 in commemoration of the two former local football players, Hassamud Din and Liaquat Ali. The final match of the tournament is scheduled for October 20.

But with all the fanfare and exorbitant cheering of crowds, the ground utterly lacks all the basic facilities for holding such a large sporting event as players exhibit their skills on a rough and uneven surface with a number of them sustaining critical injuries during the tournament, putting at risk their fitness and sporting future.

Players demand establishment of academy and grassy ground with ample seating capacity

The ground also offers no facility of ‘dressing rooms’ and separate washrooms to players and team managers while spectator stands are most of the times filled with filth and litter due to absence of any cleaning mechanism with neither the tehsil municipal authority nor the district administration taking responsibility of the maintenance of the ground.

However, despite all these shortcomings and an absence of a proper academy for emerging promising players, Landi Kotal, which is considered a ‘fertile land’ for talented footballers, has so far produced 15 players of national level with seven of them representing Pakistan at international level.

Prominent among them are Ateeq Shinwari, Tufail Shinwari, Yasir Afridi, Bismillah Shinwari, Kashif Khan and Mohammad Awais. Tufail Shinwari has won a ‘golden boot’ for scoring three consecutive hat tricks in international street child football tournament in Norway few years ago.

Ateeq Shinwari has represented Pakistan in most international events while Mohammad Awais has been declared the best player and best scorer in the recently concluded national junior football competition.

Late Suhail Khan along with Mustaqeem, Khalid Afridi, Saleh Khan, Nadeem, Rehman and Sibghatullah had represented different departments and regions at national level.

“It was purely their God-gifted natural talent and unmatched passion for football that players from Landi Kotal were selected for national and international events with negligible sporting facilities at local level,” Ateeq Shinwari told Dawn.

He said that Tufail Shinwari was currently in Qatar to represent Pakistan in an international tournament with Saudi Arabia, offering him to play for a local club while Pakistan Football Federation looked the other way and was least bothered about his career.

He demanded establishment of a coaching academy along with a grassy ground with full-fledged facilities for players and organisers and expansion in the seating capacity to accommodate the growing number of football enthusiasts.

Mirajud Din, the patron-in-chief of Khyber Sports Club, lamented official indifference to the game of football and said that his organisation was arranging all necessary facilities during the tournament from its own resources while also tackling the critical responsibility of ground security with thousands of spectators turning up every day and local police staying away from their official responsibilities.

A prominent former striker of his team, Mr Din said that Landi Kotal served as a nursery for best football players despite limited facilities and resources. He claimed that standard of game was improving with every passing year but directorate of sports was looking the other way.

“It has been almost four decades that we have been organising such healthy events in Landi Kotal but still we play and sit on dusty ground with a number of our very talented players ending their career at an early stage due to rough nature of ground surface,” he said.

He, however, said that such tournaments provided healthy entertainment to locals in an otherwise depressed environment. “These events also promote regional harmony and close interaction among young players while also provide a window of opportunity to promising players to showcase their natural talent in front of the cheering crowd and attract the attention of departmental and regional teams,” he said with an optimistic note.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2025