Pakistan team leaves for Socca Football World Cup

Pakistan Socca Football team has reached Lisbon, Portugal on Saturday to participate in the 32-team inaugural six-a-side ISF Socca Football World Cup, which commences today (Sunday). The players in green will play their first match against top class football playing nation Spain on Sunday. Pakistan will be playing Moldova in their group match on Monday and later Russia on September 27.
However, team manager Zabe Khan said that his boys will not be playing under pressure and would do all out efforts to make the nation proud. "The team's morale is high and we will be putting our best in the game tomorrow and in matches to make the nation proud," said Khan on the eve of the team's first game.
The team left for Dubai from Karachi in the afternoon of September 21 and from there the team took flight for Madrid, Spain. The team then took a bus for Lisbon, the city which will be hosting all matches of the mega event. Pakistan has been placed in Group 'B' along with tough football playing nations Spain, Russia and Moldova in the six-a-side tournament.
The 32 teams have been divided into eight groups of four teams each. After playing matches against one another in the group, two top teams from each group will qualify for last-16 knockout round. From here, teams would progress to quarterfinals, semifinals and eventually final, which will be played on September 29.
This year in July, Leisure Leagues Pakistan (LLP) organized an eight-team LLP National Championship, with the winner of the tournament to get a chance to participate in Socca World Cup. Lahore's ten-member ICAW (I Can and Will) team won the small-sided tournament and qualified for the Socca World Cup. Another four players were later added to the squad - one player each from the other three semifinalist teams and one player from Pakistan team that featured in Street Child World Cup to strengthen the team as the tournament, to be held in Lisbon, allows teams to bring as much as 15 players.
In LLP National Championship, all of the eight teams, which qualified for the national championship, were champions of their respective cities either in Leisure Leagues Intra-City events or Leisure Leagues seasons. The eight teams were equally divided into two groups - Group 'A' and Group 'B'. Group 'A' consisted of teams from Karachi, Quetta, Hyderabad and Mardan. Meanwhile, Group 'B' consisted of teams from Peshawar, Lahore, Islamabad and Qila Saifullah. Each team played three matches in the group stage.