Pakistan twice came from behind in an enthralling South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Under-17 Championship clash against India, only for their arch-rivals to go ahead for a third time and eventually clinch a 3-2 victory at the Colombo Racecourse Stadium on Monday that secured top spot in the group.<\/p>\n
Goals in each half by Pakistan\u2019s Mohammad Abdullah, from the penalty spot, and Hamza Yasir had levelled the Group \u2018B\u2019 clash at 2-2 by the 70th minute but India\u2019s substitute Rahan Ahmed found the winner in the 73rd to take his side through to a semi-final against Group \u2018A\u2019 runners-up Nepal.<\/p>\n
Pakistan, meanwhile, take on Group \u2018A\u2019 winners Bangladesh with both last-four clashes to be held on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Both teams had already secured semi-final berths and heading into the final group game, Pakistan held the advantage by the barest of margins \u2014 on goals scored \u2014 and a draw would\u2019ve sufficed for Nasir Ismail\u2019s side to avoid Bangladesh, who have ousted them in the semi-final stage of each of the last two editions.<\/p>\n
Bangladesh also beat Pakistan in the final of the 2018 edition but the current crop would be confident of their chances, especially after a valiant display against four-time defending champions India.<\/p>\n
After even exchanges in the opening half hour, India took the lead in the 31st minute when Danny Singh Wangkhem\u2019s cutback was hammered in by Dallalmoun Gangte.<\/p>\n
Pakistan immediately sought an equaliser, and it arrived two minutes before half-time when Hamza\u2019s darting run drew a foul in the box and Abdullah sent Indian custodian Manashjyoti Baruah the wrong way from the resulting spot-kick.<\/p>\n
An end-to-end game then swung into India\u2019s favour in the 63rd when Gunleiba Wangkheirakpam ran onto a throughball and slotted it past the advancing Saamar Razzak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan twice came from behind in an enthralling South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Under-17 Championship clash against India, only for their arch-rivals to go ahead for a third time and eventually clinch a 3-2 victory at the Colombo Racecourse Stadium on Monday that secured top spot in the group. Goals in each half by Pakistan\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12173,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12171\/revisions\/12173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}