KARACHI, Dec 15: Pakistan Football Federation’s (PFF) Youth Cup will take place at various cities of the country from Jan 10 to 25, after a lapse of over one year.

The first edition of the event, which was limited to under-18 players and won by coach Nasir Ismail’s Karachi ‘B’ team, was played in July and August 2007.

The Youth Cup was started to monitor working of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) AID-27 coaches who run 27 football associations all over the country to groom footballers at the grassroots level under the AFC financial assistance scheme.

The event returned the same year in December in a somewhat revamped U-14 version and claimed by coach Hassan Baloch’s Karachi Yellows.

This time, the Cup will be an under-13 affair. Only players born on or after Jan 1, 1996, are eligible to play.

Having won on both the occasions, Karachi would be on a hat-trick.

The 27 coaches whose teams will feature in the upcoming event are:

Bilal Ahmed Butt, Nauman Ibrahim, Rana Zahir Ahmed, Tanveer Ahmed, Mohammad Habib, Shahzad Anwar, Sajjad Mahmood Khan, Mohammad Rashid, Hassan Baloch, Nasir Ismail, Salim Patni, Zafar Iqbal, Niaz Ahmed Abro, Abdul Karim, Najibullah Najmi, Haji Abdul Sattar, Gohar Zaman, Qazi Wajid Ali, Fazle Ghaffar, Saeedullah, Faisal Khan, Mohammad Saleem, Haji Mohammad Aslam, Iftikhar Ahmed Ghani, Mohammad Siddique, Mohammad Asghar (Quetta) and Mohammad Asghar (Lahore).