Pakistan’s head coach Stephen Constantine has given a roadmap to the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) Normalization Committee for how a football league should be set up in the country.
While speaking to a news media channel the Pakistan head coach emphasized the importance of a league structure and youth development, “The first thing we need is a 12-team league. That’s the first thing. With a 12-team league, we would play home and away, that’s 22 games. Then you would split the top 6 and the bottom 6, and the top 6 would play home and away, that’s another 10 games, and that qualifies us for AFC tournaments because that’s 28,29 games. Then you have the bottom 6.”
Constantine suggested that the premier league in Pakistan should not have any foreign players and that all the clubs in the league should have youth teams that work on developing players who belong to the age group of Under-17 and Under-19.
“My suggestion if I were the guy deciding what happens in the leagues is no foreign players in the Pakistan league for the next 3 years, so that we can develop the Pakistani players. Those teams that are in those leagues will have to have a U-19 team and U-17 team, Pakistani coaches with foreign coaches that are going to come here and work and develop the players.” said the Pakistan head coach.
However, the British-born head coach added that the foreign players can be inducted into the league after the initial three years of the league once it grows in stature and the local players start to develop.
“Then after 3 years, maybe we can have 2 foreign players in the league, but they must be U-23, so it’s allowed the Pakistani players to develop.”
The former India head coach said that the main issue with players that come from other countries is that they take up the positions where the local players should play and thus the growth of those players is mostly stunted in terms of technical and tactical skill.
“We don’t want to bring foreigners in so that they take the positions where we need Pakistani players for the national team to develop, that was the mistake they made in the Indian Super League.”
Stephen pointed out that the ISL has 4 foreign players who can feature in the playing XI of each Indian club during the league season but that is acceptable for India as they are miles ahead of the rest of South Asia in their development.
Pakistan’s head coach believes that every player has four elements physical, mental, technical, and tactical but only a league structure can develop those four traits in a player.
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