GEO Super Football League to start with a bang
By Muhammad Shahbaz Zahid
KARACHI: Football is on the rise in Pakistan. And in order to promote the ‘beautiful game’ further, the up and coming Geo Super TV is launching a league — Super Football League — from the 20th of this month.
Geo Super signed a contract last year with the game’s governing body in the country — Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) -ñ for a period of seven years. And the hard work is about to pay off as the tournament starts with the official launching ceremony on July 15, containing as many as five teams from all over the country, which would be attended by the PFF President Faisal Saleh Hayat and Geo TV chief Imran Aslam among others.
As many as 20 matches would be played in the tournament among the Karachi Baazigars, Peshawar Tribe FC, Islamabad United, Lahore Lajpaals and Quetta Zorawar FC with each team playing each other twice.
Though the tournament will be played in Karachi — at the People’s Stadium near Mauripur road — the format of the tournament still resides on home-and-away basis, with their kits differentiating them as home or away team.
The tournament which ends on September 9 will be played under floodlights. There will be matches played on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The semifinals will be played on Thursday (September 6) and Friday (September 7) with the final on Sunday. The teams, who have been provided coloured kits and will sport impressive logos, will arrive here in Karachi today (Tuesday) and will be lodged at the Pakistan Steel Town.
Around 3000 players participated in the training camps set up for selection of the teams which shows the growth and interest of the game in the country. The Super Football League will start with an aim to provide youth an opportunity and help players gain exposure to display their talent at the local as well as at the international level.
All the five participating teams contain experience players who have played international football as well. The selection committee was given a hard task to cut down the probables list of each team to 20.
The teams do not only contain players from the respective cities their name belongs to, but also from other nearby cities and towns also, for example Karachi Baazigars have a few players who belong to Hyderabad as well.
The organising team has decided that the next edition of the tournament would be on a different format with more teams and each city would be given a chance to enter the tournament with their own local players.
There is no age restrictions on players in the teams but a minimum age of 16 has been pencilled in. Each team contains as many as 10 players aged under-19 and ten players aged above-19.
