India vs. Pakistan Football Series likely to be Postponed

The high profile football friendly series between historic rivals-India and Pakistan in the United Kingdom is likely to be postponed or scrapped because of Pakistan Football Federation’s (PFF) failure to find a sponsors for the matches.

The PFF is facing difficulties in finding a sponsor for the high-profile series which could change the dimension of the game in both the countries. The Federation has send out a detailed budget plan to the prospective sponsors but is still awaiting reply.

It is reported that the sponsors are finding it useless to invest in a series played outside the continent as their products are basically local and have only local reach.

“With time running out as the team has to leave for England on August 25 the issue of finding sponsors is getting more troublesome,” a source within PFF, close to PTI said.

Meanwhile the PFF hasn’t yet submitted the VISA application for its players and officials to the UK High Commission in Islamabad.

“Normally the minimum time taken for processing visas by the UK commission is three weeks so that means the PFF is running out of time,” the source said.

The All India Football Federation however has confirmed that everything is on track and they are not aware of the development in Pakistan.

“We haven’t heard of anything. Things are okay at our end. The only problem is that they wanted the dates to be changed a bit,” said AIFF general secretary Kushal Das.

The organizers of the series ‘Touchsky Sports’ have timed the tournament to tap the sub-continent’s huge population present in the UK. The matches were slated to take place in Manchester on August 27, at the Ricoh Stadium in Coventry on September 3 and at West Ham United‘s home Upton Park in London on September 9.