The Pakistan U15 football team ended its first ever FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival campaign on a winning note on Friday, coming from behind to beat Djibouti 4-2 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The result closes the tournament story that began with the historic 6-1 win over Tonga, and it means the young Shaheens fly home with four wins and two draws from ten matches at their debut world event.
Pakistan U15 football team: the finale in Baku
Pakistan trailed at half-time at the Hovsan Competition Complex after Djibouti scored from a right-wing cross, and for a while the campaign looked set to end in disappointment. Captain Mohammad Mustafa changed the mood, stepping up to fire a free kick from the edge of the penalty area into the net for the equaliser. With Djibouti reduced in number after a sending-off, Pakistan pressed home the advantage, and in added time a kick-in from Mustafa found Danish Masih at the far post to complete the 4-2 win. Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) President Syed Mohsen Gilani, who attended the match, congratulated the players and the team management on the campaign.
Photo: Peter Glaser via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
The full campaign, match by match
The FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival brought 189 teams to Azerbaijan for a festival-format tournament. Pakistan’s ten matches ran as follows:
- Group stage: two points from the group matches, including the 6-1 victory over Tonga, Pakistan’s first ever win at a FIFA event
- Tier matches: drew 0-0 with Nepal, losing the placement shoot-out 4-3
- Beat the Bahamas 5-0
- Beat the Cook Islands 7-1
- Beat Djibouti 4-2 in the final match
- Campaign record: 10 matches, 4 wins, 2 draws, 4 defeats
In the tier stage alone Pakistan scored 22 goals and conceded 4 across five matches, winning four of them. The PFF reported an overall finish of 169th of the 189 teams in the festival standings, while FIFA’s match data places the side ninth of the 32 teams in their tier. For a squad playing its first world event, the numbers that matter most are simpler: four wins, goals in every tier match, and a comeback victory to finish.
What kind of tournament was it?
The event in Azerbaijan was the first edition of the FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival, a new format that brought 189 teams together in one place. Alongside the matches, the festival model gives young players educational and cultural sessions and a first taste of international travel with a national squad. Teams were grouped into tiers for the placement rounds, which is how Pakistan, after a group stage that brought two points, came to play five tier matches against Tonga, Nepal, the Bahamas, the Cook Islands and Djibouti. The standard varied, as it always does at this age, but the structure gave a debut squad something priceless: repeated experience of preparing for, playing and reviewing international fixtures in a single trip.
The road from here
The real test of this campaign starts now. A festival squad only becomes a pathway if its players keep meeting, training and progressing together into the under-17 age group, and if the federation builds fixtures around them rather than letting the group scatter. The PFF has presented the Baku trip as part of a longer-term youth plan, and the raw material is there: a captain who changes games from midfield, scorers spread across the squad, and a defence that kept two clean sheets in the placement round. For supporters who followed the opening win over Tonga and the draw with Nepal, the Djibouti result was the right ending: a young team that learned, improved and finished its first world event by winning.
Why this campaign matters for the Pakistan U15 football team
Pakistan’s appearance at the festival was itself the headline when the team travelled to Baku: a first FIFA event for the country’s youngest national side, covered step by step after the Tonga result made headlines at home. The squad now returns with tournament experience against teams from Oceania, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa, and with a group of players who have learned to win matches at international level before their sixteenth birthdays. The PFF leadership’s presence in Baku underlined how much store the federation sets by this age group, which forms the base of the pathway toward the under-17 and under-20 national teams.
The performances also add weight to a growing body of junior sport results this season, from the senior football side’s cooperation agreement with Iran, reported in our story on the Pakistan Iran football cooperation MoU, to Pakistan’s young cricketers defending their Asia Cup title in Oman. Follow them all on our Pakistan Sports Good News page.
Sources
- Pakistan end FIFA U15 World Cup and Festival campaign with win over Djibouti, Geo Super
- Shaheens sign off debut FIFA U-15 Festival with victory, Centre Line (APP)
- Pakistan end historic FIFA U-15 campaign with 4-2 win, DNA News Agency
- Photo: Krzysztof Popławski via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Umar is an engineer by profession and a passionate writer by passion. He has a deep interest in sharing good news related to Pakistan and has been working hard to promote the positive image of his homeland. Umar has written numerous articles on various topics related to Pakistan, such as technology, sports, culture, and economy.