KARACHI, March 7: Pakistan’s ‘first laptop football coach’ reckons the much-anticipated Inter-City Football League isn’t a novel idea.

“It isn’t something which hasn’t been done before,” National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) manager Nasir Ismail told Dawn on Thursday. “The Super Football League [played in 2007 and 2010] had exactly the same format.”

The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) has been working on getting potential sponsors for the league, which it says, will feature foreign players.

“We’re looking into it and trying to rope in some foreign talents through the sponsors,” PFF’s marketing consultant Sardar Naveed Haider Khan told Dawn earlier this week.

According to Nasir, though, the emphasis should be on making the Pakistan Premier Football League (PPFL) better rather than investing elsewhere.

“The priority should be the PPFL as it is the flagship event of the country,” he said. “They should work on overcoming the shortfalls of the PPFL and it could do with the investment which will be made in the inter-city league.

“The number of walkovers in the PPFL are immense and that can be overcome by centralising the league … I mean look at the armed forces skipping their matches in Balochistan. Isn’t that damaging the image of the league?”

Nasir’s view is endorsed by the man he terms as his biggest teacher and the man he says helped him introduce the laptop culture to football coaching in Pakistan — Tariq Lutfi.

“There is no use of holding an event if its format is same as the PPFL,” Lutfi told Dawn. “If it has the same players who featured in the PPFL, it won’t help in promoting new talent.”

Nasir, meanwhile, called for two separate leagues in the PPFL with a departmental championship and the club championship so that the disparity amongst the two is overcome.

“Clubs in the country now enjoy more financial and fan support so it should help in improving the PPFL,” he said.

Speaking about his own improving coaching credentials, he believes that after serving as the national team’s assistant coach for a long period, he feels he is ready to take the top job.

“I’ve assisted Bahrain’s Salman Sharida, Hungarian George Kottan, Lutfi and current coach Zavisa Milosavljevic of Serbia during their time as national team coaches but now I think I’m very much capable of doing the job independently,” he said.

He does feel hard done by the PFF’s recent attitude towards him but says football is his passion and he will continue working undeterred.

“I still have 15 years of service left for NBP and I’ve already started taking banking courses to enhance my position there,” he added. “But football is my passion and if the PFF decides to use my service, I’m willing to sacrifice everything for that.”

Nasir was only recently removed from his post of assistant coach of the national team with Shahzad Anwar replacing him.

The highly-qualified coach also credits NBP Sports head and former Pakistan Test cricketer Iqbal Qasim as the man who has been supporting him throughout his career.

“Iqbal Qasim was the first person who encouraged me to bring the laptop culture in football coaching in Pakistan before I had support from Lutfi,” Nasir informs. “Since then, almost every coach has been using it.”