SAFF U-17 Championship
\nislamabad
\nPakistan notched their second straight win at the SAFF U-17 Championship on Friday, defeating Maldives 5-2 in their group-stage clash at the Racecourse Ground in Colombo.
\nMansoor Ahmad was the star of the day for Pakistan, completing a first-half hat trick to put Pakistan firmly in control. He opened the scoring in the 12th minute with a composed finish before doubling the lead in the 32nd. Just before halftime, Ahmad converted a penalty in the 45th minute to seal his treble.
\nMaldives briefly threatened a comeback when Ali Ilaan struck in the 42nd minute, but Muhammad Abdullah restored Pakistan\u2019s cushion with two goals \u2014 first from the penalty spot in first-half stoppage time and again in the 61st minute after a well-worked move.
\nMaldives\u2019 Mohamed Shayan Shifau scored in the 71st minute to reduce the deficit, but Pakistan comfortably saw out the game.
\nThe 5-2 result follows Pakistan\u2019s opening win against Bhutan earlier in the tournament, strengthening their chances of reaching the semifinals. With six points from two games, Pakistan sit in a strong position in their group and will next face archrival India in their final group match on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SAFF U-17 Championship islamabad Pakistan notched their second straight win at the SAFF U-17 Championship on Friday, defeating Maldives 5-2 in their group-stage clash at the Racecourse Ground in Colombo. Mansoor Ahmad was the star of the day for Pakistan, completing a first-half hat trick to put Pakistan firmly in control. He opened the scoring …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87053,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87036\/revisions\/87053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}