‘Foreign soccer coaches should be appointed after scrutiny’
Pakistan Times Sports Desk

KARACHI: Pakistan football coach has suggested to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) that the appointment of foreign coaches for a country should be made after proper scrutiny and on merit.

UF Tariq Lutfi, Pakistan coach, who attended the first AFC Coaches Conference at Kuala Lumpur, in his written comments submitted before the AFC President Peter Vellapan, observed that the foreign coaches, hired for Pakistan in the past, were not ‘so effective’ as they should’ve since they possessed the second-grade qualification.

"The local coaches should be preferred over the foreign coaches in the first place and if it’s indispensable to appoint a foreign coach, he must be well-versed of his field. His appointment should be made after proper scrutiny and on the basis of his past experience," he remarked.

In his report, Lutfi was of the view that a good foreign coach provided exposure to local coaches, working along them him. "It’s irony that local coaches in Asia are regarded as ‘inferior’ to foreigners and they’ve to tackle different types of off-the-field problems such as media pressure and players’ power. He is forced to step down after his team fails to live up to the expectations. This is negative approach and local coaches must be allowed to work for some time," he said.

Lutfi, who is busy in raising a strong outfit for the Islamic Games, informed the AFC chief that as far as he was concerned, he (Lutfi) was working with Pakistan’s national team with full authority and powers. "The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) empowers me full authority to coach the boys and nobody interferes in my job," he said.

Dr Jozef Yengos delivered the keynote address in the AFC Coaches Conference, which was attended by the coaches, directors and other officials from Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, the UAE, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen.

"The seasoned coaches stressed the Asian countries to concentrate on their youth development programme. The concept of youth development is broad-based and it means choosing few most talented kids from one thousand children. We can’t expect good performance from the players, who are selected at their mature age. For the progress of football, we’ll have to polish the boys at the grass-root level," were the observations, made by different delegates.

Japanese coach elaborating their ‘vision programme’ set the target that they would be World Champions in the year 2050 while Iraqi coach pointing out the marvellous performance of his team in the Athens Olympic Games, said that majority of the players of his team had been playing together for the last 13 years despite his country went through series crisis and turbulent period.●