KARACHI, May 20: Pakistan football team will play a three-match friendly series with India at the neutral venue of UK in July.

This was announced by the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) on Friday after All India Football Federation’s (AIFF) Executive Committee gave its approval for the event in its meeting held in New Delhi earlier in the day.

“It is a fully-funded tour being organised by FIFA-approved match and players’ agents Touch Sky Sports,” explained PFF Director Marketing & Event Management Sardar Naveed Haider Khan, the main person involved in negotiating the tour, while speaking to Dawn on Friday.

“Recognising the existence of a large community of people from these parts of the world in England, the sponsors also intend making a regular thing of the series involving other South Asian countries, such as Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, in the next three years,” he provided.

“Plus the exposure will prove very beneficial for the players as the matches would also be watched by scouts from professional clubs on the lookout for good players,” said Naveed. “We watch and read so much about the English Premier League but there is so much more football going on in the UK. They play first, second and third division football and even if our boys get an offer for a season with a second or third division football club, the fee would amount to something in vicinity of 40 to 50 thousand pounds.

“The entire standard of football will go up here once the doors to club transfers open for our players,” he added.

Meanwhile, both the countries need to acquire a no-objection certificate from their respective sports ministries in order to go ahead with the event. But the director marketing was of the view that it would be just a formality.

“As an outcome of the successful meeting of the premiers of both countries at the cricket World Cup semi-final in Mohali, matches between both countries are to be resumed anyway. We recently saw the Indian judo team coming to Islamabad, too,” he pointed out. “So we see no problems there when the PFF and AIFF want this.”

The press conference preceding the event will be held on July 7 at Wembley, the home venue of the England national team, while the games, to be played at three different venues in the UK, will be telecast live on an Indian channel.