8 teams partcipated in this tournament being jointly held in Sri Lanka and Maldives.
Pakistan was placed in a group with India, Nepal and Maldives.
Pakistani Team lost 3-0 to Maldives, 2-1 to India and 4-1 to Nepal. India and Maldives qualified from this group to the Semis.
In another group(Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh) , Bhutan created the unexpected after qualifying for the semis. The other team joining them would be Sri Lankans.
Semis would be played between India and Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
This is the second set of recent miserable tournaments for Pakistan . In April they had lost to Sri Lanka by a margin of 7 goals to 1 in a Tournament(AFC Challenge Cup Qualifiers)in Taiwan.
Re: 7th South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship
Whats happening with our football? That was not so bad - loosing Nepal and Maldieves by such a margin never happened before.
Surely sports are on a decline in this country.
Re: 7th South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship
^ Pakistan has hired the services of a lot of Brit Asian players. One is Fulham player Zesh Rehman.Others include Adnan Ahmed, Atif Bashir,Amjad Iqbal etc.
Pakistani coach Akhtar Mohiuddin (appointed by Faisal Saleh Hayat/Chairman PFF) blames that these players are playing unprofessionaly and like amateurs. That's why the Pakistan Football Federation has made a rule for all players to report atleast 10 days ahead of the training camps.
Since after this SAFF debacle Akhtar Mohiuddin is probably fired.
Afghanistan on the other hand has also hired the services of a bunch of expat Afghans playing for German Leagues. Current Afghanistani Team is made up of atleat a half a dozen of these players. Afganistan has benefited a lot with the presence of these players in their team and have jumped 14 places in the international rankings. In the SAFF cup they played well and drew against Sri Lanka(who had defeated Pakistan by a 7-1 margin the last month) and Bangladesh. They were favorites to qualify for the Semis until these German players fell sick and they lost to Bhutan in the final group game.