Football in Pakistan
is among the most popular team sports in Pakistan, together with long time number one cricket and field hockey.
Pakistan's current top domestic football league is the Pakistan Premier League, recognised by the AFC as the official national football league. The National Football Challenge Cup is a knock-out competition among Pakistani departmental and government institutions. Football in general is run by the Pakistan Football Federation.
History
Origins
The origin of football in Pakistan can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century when the game was introduced by British soldiers during the British Raj. British evangelist Theodore Leighton Pennell played a crucial role in introducing football to the North-West Frontier Province in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In the south in Karachi, the sport was further popularised through interactions with sailors at the port.One of the regional federations to organise football in what is now Pakistan Territory was the North-West India Football Association, established in 1932 and reportedly encompassing football control in Punjab, NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan. In addition several regional leagues were also organised in cities such as Lahore. Before the 1930s, football in the region was dominated by military, railway, and college teams. Before independence, many notable players from present-day Pakistan also made their mark in the Calcutta League, particularly for Kolkata Mohammedan.
Early years (1950s)
Shortly after the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the Pakistan Football Federation was created, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah became its first Patron-in-Chief. PFF received recognition from FIFA in early 1948.The annual National Football Championship was organised shortly after. Held on knock-out basis and a closed format competition, this tournament brought together regional provincial and division association teams, as well as departmental and armed forces teams representing various government institutions, emerging as the premier football tournament in the country. Parallel to the championship, many separate amateur regional leagues with promotion and relegation featuring clubs were also held, like Karachi Football League, Lahore Football League, or Quetta Football League. Players frequently took part in these competitions for their local clubs, while also being selected to represent either their provincial/divisional associations or their departmental teams in the National Championship. The Dhaka First Division League gave a level of competitive professionalism in East Pakistan, which lacked in West Pakistan, and many players affiliated with its clubs, both from West and East Pakistan, were chosen to represent the East Pakistan provincial team or the Dhaka Division team in the National Championship.
In 1950, the national team gained their first international experience in Iran and Iraq. Pakistan's next international outing came in the 1952 Asian Quadrangular Football Tournament where the team played its first match against India, which ended in a goalless draw and emerged as joint winners of the tournament after finishing with the same points in the table.
In the 1950s because of limited options available for PFF, international games were infrequent. Pakistan could not participate in any World Cup qualification for many years because of financial limitations and political instability inside the PFF, competing mainly in the Asian Quadrangular Football Tournament editions and the Asian Games. Pakistan also hosted the Ismail Gold Shield Football Tournament which featured teams from India, Iran, Ceylon, along with others. The matches were held under floodlights, mainly at the Ibn-e-Qasim Bagh Stadium in Multan.
Emergence (1960s)
The 1960s resulted in Pakistan football most prominent years. Pakistan had participated in various friendly tournaments in the early 1960s, with the Merdeka Cup hosted in Malaysia after the country first participation in 1960. Pakistan recorded a 7–0 victory over Thailand, and a 3–1 win over Japan. In the 1962 Merdeka Tournament, Pakistan ended runner up after falling to Singapore by 1–2 in the final.The decade also saw many foreign teams often tour Pakistan for test matches, including Burma, China and Saudi Arabia national teams, and teams from the Soviet Union. In 1963, whilst on a world tour, Bundesliga side Fortuna Düsseldorf toured East and West Pakistan playing friendly matches against select XI sides. The American team Dallas Tornado went on a world tour that took them from Europe to Asia. During the trip, the team made a week’s stop in Pakistan from October to November 1967, where they played the Pakistan national team.
Dark era (1970s)
Following the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh. This separation also led to the loss of the Dhaka First Division League.File:PIA football team 1970.jpg|thumb|Pakistan Airlines was the most successful team at the National Football Championship with nine titles|leftFootball mainly survived on the basis of sports budgets of departmental teams like WAPDA, Army, KESC, SSGC, PIA and Railways, which hired footballers as employees and provided them with a basic wage to play for their sides and work full time in the off-season. During this dark period, however, several local leagues were launched across the Middle East, where several Pakistani players represented club sides in these leagues and some of these players even coached the clubs’ new youth setups. Several local tournaments also started in Pakistan, such as the international Quaid-e-Azam International Tournament.
Resurgence (1980–1990)
In 1985, the Asian Football Confederation brought back the Asian Club Championship after a 14 year absence. Pakistan Airlines, having won the 1984 Inter-Provincial Championship, was elected to become Pakistan’s first representative in Asian club football, ending up unsuccessful. Pakistan started playing a vital role in the World Cups for years before the participation. The sports goods industry of Sialkot had been providing millions of footballs around the world, peaking during World Cup seasons, since 1980. However Pakistan began with their first ever participation for the 1990 FIFA World Cup qualifiers for Italy in 1989, ending up unsuccessful. The national team bounced back, when several months later they took Gold at the 1989 South Asian Games, beating Bangladesh 1–0 in the final. In the 1991 South Asian Games, Pakistan beat the Maldives in the final 2–0 to win their second Gold. Later in the year the first SAFF Cup took place in Lahore in 1993, and the national team finished fourth.Decline (1990s–2003)
Pakistani football became a hot bed for politics in the early 1990s. In 1990, Pakistan Football Federation held its general elections in which Mian Muhammad Azhar won the presidency by a margin of one vote, beating the Pakistan Peoples Party leader Faisal Saleh Hayat. Azhar later ousted PFF General Secretary Hafiz Salman Butt in 1994 due to political rifts and alleged abuse of power.Under Hafiz Salman Butt, the 1992–93 and 1993–94 seasons of the National Football Championship structured on a proper league-style basis and spread over a number of months. The top division, named as National Lifebuoy A-Division Football Championship, operated alongside a system of promotion and relegation with the second-tier National Lifebuoy ''B-Division Football Championship,'' which was won by Crescent Textile Mills, National Bank, and Frontier Scouts. Wohaib FC, founded by Butt, emerged as a leading club of the country in the early 1990s and became the first Pakistani club to pass the qualifying round of the Asian Club Championship, where it qualified in the 1992–93 edition.
The years were often regarded as the best administrative era of Pakistani football. Butt also managed to get a three-year sponsorship deal with Lifebuoy Soap, with amounts of 35 million PKR spent in the organisations of the seasons and televised through the country. In 1992, Lever Brothers Pakistan Limited also signed a sponsorship and financed the PFF to revive the National Youth Championship and ensured that football was included in the National Games of Pakistan as one of the sports, besides ensuring a spot in the Asian Football Confederation competitions. With Butt's dismissal in 1994 and ban by FIFA in 1995, Pakistani football declined again into an era of mismanagement and long-lasting lack of sponsors in the upcoming years. The National Championship also reverted to its previous knockout format.
Pakistan Airlines lost their dominance until the end of the 1990s, winning their last of 9 national championships in 1997. WAPDA, Pakistan Army, and Allied Bank before their disbanding in early 2000s took over as the dominant sides in Pakistan. The physically dominant gameplay of Punjab teams, had over-taken Karachi football by then.
Faisal Saleh Hayat Era (2003–2017)
In August 2003, the PFF became under new management, as the politician Faisal Saleh Hayat took over. Under new management, the Pakistan Football Federation phased out the National Football Championship and in 2004 introduced the Pakistan Premier League with promotion and relegation. With the inception of the newly formed league, provincial and divisional teams were phased out. In contrast, departmental and armed forces teams, which hired footballers as employees and provided them with a basic wage to play for their sides and work full time in the off-season, remained active in the new league format. The emergence of clubs like founding member Afghan FC Chaman or Muslim FC gave competition to departmental sides, which poached talented players without any transfer fees or compensation involved. The Geo Super Football League of 2007, running as a parallel city-based league to Pakistan Premier League, held in Karachi saw record crowds at Peoples Stadium. It wasn’t until 2010 with the next edition that the Geo League came back only to be discontinued due to differences with the PFF. The Pakistan under-23 national team also showed improvement, winning the South Asian Games gold in 2004 and 2006. Karachi also saw resurgence in football with Karachi United emerging in the mid 2000s focusing on grass-roots level football in Pakistan.However the controversial PFF chief Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat politician soon became known as a "feudal lord of Pakistani football" due to embezzlement of funds among other controversies. Since March 2015, the top division of the Pakistan Premier League remained suspended because the crisis created due to his actions, along with the men's senior team, who remained suspended from any international competition, and FIFA rankings of the senior team had slumped. During his controversial tenure, Pakistan's FIFA ranking dropped from 168 in 2003 to 201 in 2017, which was the year that PFF consequently received a ban from FIFA.