Holders Balochistan will face a stiff challenge from 15 teams of Pakistan when the 19th National U-18 Football Championship explodes into action tomorrow, Tuesday, at the Model Town Football Club's venue at C-Block, Model Town. Balochistan with Karachi and Railways have the honour of winning the National Youth Soccer title thrice while Army and Dhaka clinched the gold twice.
Karachi and Dhaka, now capital of Bangladesh, were once joint winners in 1966. The teams winning the event once are Sargodha, Multan, Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan Steel and Faisalabad.
Balochistan have the great chance to win their fourth title since their main rivals, Karachi and Railways, are no longer in the event. Financial problems forced the Pakistan Railways Sports Board to stop entering the team while Karachi's players are representing the Sindh team.
Some of the biggest names in the Pakistan football make their first mark at this competition with the likes of Chaudhry Asghar, Yunus Changezi (1964), Ali Nawaz (1966), Akbar Raisani, Muhammad Ali Shah (1972), Naushad Baloch, Mukhtar Ali (1979), Sharafat Ali, Khalid Mehmood, Jamshed Rana (1981), Mateen Akhter, Fayyaz Siddiqui (1982), Haji Sattar, Fidaur Rehman, Tariq Hussain, Abdul Wahid (1985), Qazi Ashfaq, Zahid Luqman, Imtiaz Butt, Nauman Ibrahim (1990), Haroon Yusuf, Hafeez Malik (1993), Babar Mehmood, Shaukat Ali (1994), Muhammad Ahmed, Abbas Ali and Imran Hussain (2004).