A football tournament in KP offers hope for the future.

Byline: Umaid Wasim

PESHAWAR -- In Pakistan's domestic football, Mohammad Rasool is regarded as one of the most deadliest strikers. On Monday, however, he sent a crowd into raptures after saving, instead of scoring, a goal.

Playing in goal during a penalty shootout in the semi-final of the Ufone Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Football Championship, the former Pakistan international saved a spot-kick in sudden death to help DFA Chitral FC beat DFA Swabi FC; a save that saw a sizeable community of Chitralis settled in the provincial capital of Peshawar wild with joy.

Rasool was the biggest drawcard at the Tehmas Football Stadium. The very fact that the Chitral-born striker was playing for the team representing his city was enough to pull a large number of his fellow citizens to the stadium. They flooded the pitch once their team won, lifting their penalty-saving hero on their shoulders and doing a lap around the stadium.

Rasool has won the Pakistan Premier Football League (PPFL), the country's top-tier tournament, with K-Electric. But even those celebrations would seem muted to the scenes on Monday. The fans were celebrating one of their own, playing for a team of their own.

A day later Rasool missed a spot-kick in the final, won by Peshawar Combined FC at a packed Tehmas. Only this time, strong security preventing a bigger pitch invasion than the one a night before. Peshawar fans were still delirious as they celebrated bragging rights with the victory, dancing with the players in celebration.

Those celebrations are something that, apart for clubs from Balochistan, are almost never seen in the top tier of Pakistan football. With departments playing, there is never that sort of affinity, that connect. It's that connect which needs to be be fostered if Pakistan is to grow.

Tournaments like the one organised by cellular company Ufone, for the first time in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, help in channeling that connect. But that connect isn't something that lives long. There is little to look forward to after this tournament, unless of course the organisers decide to host a second edition of the tournament.

They might do that though. A similar tournament that they hold in the province of Balochistan is expected to see a fourth edition in March next year.

'We have plans to take the winning team of the KP tournament on a victory parade in their hometown and hopefully that will promote further interest in the tournament,' Amir Pasha, the company's head of PR and digital...