Pakistan End 961-Day Wait for International Football Win with Maldives Victory
By Sayed Abdullah | June 5, 2026
The last time Pakistan's men's football team won an international match, the world looked very different. It was October 2023. Cambodia had just been beaten in a World Cup qualifier, and the briefest flicker of hope had ignited among the long-suffering fans of Pakistani football. Then the silence. Match after match, tournament after tournament, the wins simply stopped. Nine hundred and sixty-one days passed. On Thursday, in the Maldives, that long, painful wait finally ended. And it ended in style — a commanding 3-0 victory that felt like more than three points. It felt like a release.
The goals came in a second-half burst that transformed a tense, goalless stalemate into a celebration. Umar Nawaz, a young man carrying a personal story of immense weight, broke the deadlock nine minutes after the restart. It was his first international goal, in only his second appearance, on his first start for the national team. Abdul Samad Arshad doubled the lead in the 84th minute. Harun Hamid added a third three minutes later. The bench erupted. The small contingent of Pakistani fans in the stands — and the much larger one watching on grainy streams back home — finally had something to cheer.
The Full Story
The match was part of the Diamond Jubilee Four-Nation Football Tournament, and Pakistan entered it under genuine pressure. A goalless draw against Bangladesh in their opening fixture had left them needing a result to keep their final hopes alive. The first half against the Maldives did nothing to ease the nerves. Chances came and went. The ball refused to go in. The familiar dread — the one that whispers "here we go again" — began to creep back into the minds of those watching. But this Pakistan side, coached by a staff that has been quietly rebuilding the national setup, did not fold. They kept pushing. And eventually, the breakthrough came.
Umar Nawaz's goal was more than a sporting moment. His path to the national team carries a story that no screenplay would dare invent. His brother, Haris Nawaz, was among the martyrs of the 2014 Army Public School attack in Peshawar — the massacre that shook the entire country and left scars that still ache. Another brother, Ahmed Nawaz, was seriously injured in the same tragedy. The family relocated to the United Kingdom in 2015, where Umar began his football journey. To go from that horror to scoring your first international goal for Pakistan, on your first start, is the kind of arc that makes sport worth caring about. It is not just a goal. It is a testament to survival.
Abdul Samad Arshad's late strike and Harun Hamid's quick third put the result beyond doubt and lifted Pakistan to four points from two matches. The win was the team's first over the Maldives since 1991 — a 35-year gap that underlined just how long Pakistani football has been waiting for moments like this. The final league-stage match against Afghanistan on June 7 will now determine whether Pakistan reach the championship final on June 10. For the first time in nearly three years, the national team heads into a match with momentum rather than just hope.
Why This Moment Matters
Pakistani football has been starved of success for so long that even a single win in a regional tournament feels disproportionately significant. The sport lives in the shadow of cricket — underfunded, underpromoted, and largely ignored by the corporate sponsors who pour millions into the national game. The Pakistan Football Federation has been through cycles of crisis, including suspensions by FIFA over governance issues. The domestic league structure is fragile. The national team's FIFA ranking has hovered in the depths, far from the glamour of even the Asian Cup, let alone the World Cup. A 3-0 win over the Maldives does not change any of that. But it reminds people that the sport still exists here. That it still matters.
The Nawaz story, in particular, resonates far beyond football. Pakistan has lived with the aftermath of APS for more than a decade. The attack was not just a tragedy — it was a turning point in the country's relationship with militancy. To see a young man who lost a brother in that massacre pull on the national jersey and score a goal is to see the possibility of healing. It does not erase the past. But it refuses to let the past define the future. That is the kind of narrative that Pakistani sport desperately needs — not manufactured heroes, but real ones, forged in real pain, doing real things on a football pitch.
The Pakistani Connection
I once tried to organise a football viewing party in Karachi for a national team match, yaar. It was a friendly against a Southeast Asian side, and getting people to turn up felt like pulling teeth. Football here is consumed passionately — but it is consumed mostly through European leagues, through Messi and Ronaldo jerseys, through Premier League watch-alongs at cafés in DHA and Gulshan. The national team, by contrast, has struggled to command the same loyalty. The reasons are understandable. The product on the pitch has been poor. The federation has been chaotic. The wins have been almost non-existent.
But Thursday night felt different. The WhatsApp groups I am in — the ones usually buzzing with talk of Barcelona or Manchester United — were lighting up with updates from the Maldives. People were genuinely excited. A ticket to a Pakistan football match, if they ever host one in Karachi or Lahore, would likely cost no more than Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,000 — accessible to students and young professionals in a way that cricket increasingly is not. The hunger for a team to support is there. It has always been there. What was missing was a reason to believe. A 3-0 win, and the story of Umar Nawaz, might just be enough to start building that belief.
The Afghanistan match on June 7 is now the most important fixture Pakistan has played in years. A place in the final is within reach. The players know it. The fans know it. And for a football community that has been waiting since 2023 for something — anything — to celebrate, this team has finally given them permission to dream. Not big dreams. Not yet. But a start.
Do you follow Pakistani football, and do you think the national team can build on this win to regain relevance? Share your thoughts — I'd especially like to hear from fans who have been following the team through the difficult years.
Sayed Abdullah is the founder and editor of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he writes about sports and the stories that connect Pakistan to the world. Read more.
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Sources
- Pakistan Football Federation — Match report and player background.
- ESPN — Coverage of the Diamond Jubilee Four-Nation Tournament.
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