PESHAWAR
Former international football player and captain Anwar Khan from Peshawar Wednesday criticized the selection criteria of selecting the veteran teams only from Punjab rather from other provinces including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Talking to media men, Anwar Khan said that it is not fair that when Pakistan becomes a national veteran football team, it is being selected from Punjab only. He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa players were also part of the national team and even more of them remained as captain of the national team but they have given no chance to be part of the National veteran team.
He said that recently the Punjab veteran team visited Peshawar and played matches with our veteran team which our team easily defeated Punjab. He said that our former players remained team members of the South Asian Games besides playing in the international matches but they were not included in the veteran teams.
However, when the national veteran team is formed, only the players from Punjab are included in it. The talented players of the rest of the provinces are being ignored, he added. This trend has been going on for the last five years and it should be challenged in all forms. The selection of the teams either age group teams, national teams or veterans’ teams, the selection would be made only on merits instead of including “Parchi or blue-eyed players in the team.
Pakistan would have been one of the top 20 teams of the world if the selection of the players could be made on merits and merits only. “We played the World Cup qualifying rounds but due to poor selection criteria our team could not make it to the high level,” Anwar Khan said.
Anwar Khan is also a qualified FIFA referee and supervised many matches at national level, and said that the selection of the national teams from age group U15 to the national level and veteran should be made through proper trials and on merits only.
