The Group B Division One opener will kick off at 4:00pm local time (2:00pm PST) at the Si Jalak Harupat Stadium, with Pakistan then scheduled to face the Philippines on Sept 29 and Vietnam on Oct 2.

“We want to use this opportunity to test ourselves against teams like Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam,” Solano said at the pre-match press conference on Friday. “It’s an honour to be here and we know it will be a tough competition.”

The challenge facing Pakistan is reflected in the FIFA rankings. Thailand are currently 94th, while Pakistan are 198th in the latest official rankings.

The Philippines are 135th and Vietnam 113th.

“All our opponents will be very tough and they have fantastic players,” Solano said. “Asian football has been getting better and better so it is a big test for us.

“We are slowly growing, we try to go step by step. We will try to prove ourselves as a national team and see how far we can go in this competition.”

For Pakistan, the tournament comes after an encouraging summer in which Solano’s side won the Diamond Jubilee International Football Tournament in the Maldives.

Pakistan went unbeaten in the four-team event, drawing 0-0 with Bangladesh before beating the Maldives 3-0 and Afghanistan 2-0 in the round-robin stage. They defeated Afghanistan by the same score in the final, with Shayek Dost and Harun Hamid scoring, to secure their first standalone international tournament title in decades.

The triumph also ended a long wait for Pakistan to reach and win a standalone tournament. Their previous final appearance had come at the 1962 Merdeka Cup, while their last tournament triumph before the Maldives success had been a shared title at the Asian Quadrangular Football Tournament in 1952.

The ASEAN Cup, however, presents a markedly different proposition.

Thailand have named a squad featuring veteran playmaker Chanathip Songkrasin, Japan-based midfielder Supachok Sarachat and English-born forward Jude Soonsup-Bell. German-based defender Nicholas Mickelson is also in the squad, under English coach Anthony Hudson.

Thailand’s squad also includes established domestic names such as Supachai Chaided of Buriram United and Peeradon Chamratsamee of Port FC, underlining the depth available to the side.

Pakistan, meanwhile, have assembled a 23-man squad that combines domestic players with a number of footballers based abroad. Captain Abdullah Iqbal will lead the side, while experienced forward Kaleemullah has returned to the national setup.

Defender Easah Suliman, who plays abroad, joined the squad in Bandung after his arrival was delayed by illness. Twenty-two members of the squad had assembled in Indonesia by Thursday, with Easah expected to link up on Friday.

The Pakistan side also includes teenage midfielder Abdul Samad, captain of the national Under-17 team, who recently signed a two-year contract with Azerbaijani champions Qarabag.

For captain Abdullah, the tournament represents a chance for the players to test themselves against opposition of a different calibre.

“It is a great opportunity for us to compete against teams at another level,” he said. “We will try to give our best.”

The FIFA ASEAN Cup is the first edition of a new FIFA tournament involving 14 teams — all 11 ASEAN members plus Bangladesh, Pakistan and Hong Kong China as guest participants. Division One, being staged in Indonesia, comprises eight teams divided into two groups, with the group winners advancing to the final and the runners-up playing for third place.

Pakistan are in the same group as three teams with considerably stronger recent records in Asian football. After Thailand, they face the Philippines on Sept 29 before meeting Vietnam on Oct 2, with all three group matches being played in Bandung except Pakistan’s final fixture against Vietnam, which is scheduled for Jakarta.

For Solano, the immediate objective is less about the size of the challenge and more about how his players respond to it.

“We are slowly growing,” the former Peru international said. “We try to go step by step. We will try to prove ourselves as a national team and see how far we can go in this competition.”

The court, which had fixed September 25 for announcing the verdict, informed the lawyers representing the accused about the postponement.

Judge Amjad Ali Shah had reserved the verdict on September 22. Following the postponement, the court has set October 1 as the new date for its announcement.

Meanwhile, lawyer Faisal Malik, representing Aleema, expressed reservations about the court’s decision to reserve the verdict. He argued that the court had not heard the defence’s arguments in the case.

Speaking to the media outside the Rawalpindi ATC, Malik said he had arrived at the court at 8am during the previous hearing and requested an exemption from personal appearance for his client.

“The court cannot deliver a verdict without hearing the arguments of Aleema Khan’s counsel,” he said, adding that he had no objection to the prosecution presenting its arguments.

“No arguments have been heard on behalf of Aleema Khan in this case,” Malik said.

He argued that the reserved verdict was unlawful because the accused’s counsel had not been allowed to present arguments.

“Let us be heard before the verdict is delivered. There is no evidence against Aleema Khan in this case,” he claimed.

Malik added that he had been present in court and respected the judicial process. He, however, expressed confidence that the court would ensure justice.

The case

The case came to be known as the November 26 protest case. The protest saw more than 10,000 PTI supporters enter Islamabad in 2024, defying a ban on public gatherings and a lockdown, and clash with around 20,000 security personnel deployed to prevent them from advancing.

A day of clashes between security forces and protesters in the city’s Red Zone ended with the PTI leadership retreating, after which the party announced that it was calling off its planned protest sit-in “for the time being”.

Subsequently, cases were registered against several PTI leaders under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Two of the cases were registered at Taxila police station and one each at Sadiqabad and Naseerabad police stations.

Aleema, along with 10 others, was booked in the case registered at Sadiqabad police station.

The government is meeting some fiscal and monetary targets while missing reforms that would alter how the state and markets actually function. There is something increasingly tiring about watching these IMF reviews. The IMF mission arrives. The government presents its case. Officials hold meetings. Statements are issued. Then the Fund’s assessment comes out, identifying almost exactly the same strengths and weaknesses that were previously pointed out. The purpose of the reviews cannot simply be to pass successive tests. Yet much of the economic effort still appears organised around precisely that objective: meet the quantitative targets, secure the next tranche and move on to the next review.

The government has achieved an important degree of macroeconomic stability. Fiscal discipline has improved. Foreign exchange reserves have been rebuilt — even if they remain fragile. The external account is less precarious than it was. These are not small gains. But stability is supposed to create the space for reform and sustainable growth. It cannot become an end in itself. The more uncomfortable question is what has actually changed underneath the stabilisation numbers.

The IMF itself continues to point to delayed critical reforms, market interventions, weak governance and missed social-sector spending. The government has also yet to fully implement several legislative and institutional changes agreed under the programme. This suggests a bigger problem. The government, like its predecessors, may be trying to complete the programme without fundamentally changing the economic model that repeatedly produces the need for such programmes. Once the programme is completed and reserves rebuilt, it may loosen the fiscal and monetary brakes to accelerate growth before the election. The temptation will be to spend the gains of stabilisation on a short-term growth push and flaunt the resulting numbers as economic success. We have been there before — not once, not twice, but more than two dozen times. The danger is repeating this cycle after the current programme. Growth must come from structural reform, not spending the gains of stability and returning to the IMF yet again.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2026