KARACHI: It has been over four months since Pakistan football team’s 20-year-old midfielder Mohammad Tauseef got injured while on international duty but is, unfortunately, still suffering with no help in sight.

Tauseef, who scored Pakistan’s lone goal in Palestine’s 2-1 win in the Lahore match on March 1, broke his posterior cruciate ligament in the second encounter that ended in a goalless draw at Karachi’s Peoples Sports Complex on March 4.

With no facility of health insurance available to the players, the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) is not willing to address the issue while the injury threatens to end Tauseef’s career.

“I have consulted various doctors with all reaching the same conclusion which is surgery. It is an expensive procedure with estimated costs of Rs600,000 but the federation doctors, other than arranging for an MRI, say that they can only offer me Rs 40 or 50 thousand. I have to arrange the rest of the amount myself somehow,” said the Faisalabad-based player while speaking to Dawn on Wednesday.

Asked if his department Wapda could help him in the treatment, Tauseef said that they could not since he was just a contractual player. “It would have been different if I had been a permanent employee though,” he remarked.

Asked what he considered doing in this regard, he said that he is trying to do whatever he can in order to ease the pain in his knee.

“I try to do some light exercises at the gym and am able to walk now without feeling too much pain but playing for me is now out of the question unless I get the surgery done,” he explained.