Pakistan U-15s vs Gambia: FIFA World Cup Opener Preview

Pakistan's young Shaheens make history in Baku — the first Pakistani team ever at a FIFA World Cup event.

Today is a red-letter day for Pakistani football. At 3:30pm Pakistan Standard Time, Pakistan's young Shaheens will walk onto a pitch in Baku, Azerbaijan, and play the first-ever FIFA World Cup match involving a Pakistani team at any level. The opponents in the historic opener are Gambia, and with five group matches crammed into just three days, the campaign will be a blur of football — and a landmark moment the country has waited decades for.

Here is everything you need to know about Pakistan's opening match and the tournament that hosts it.

A first that actually means something

Pakistan's football story has, for too long, been about near-misses and what-ifs. The senior team has never come close to a World Cup, the domestic game has lurched from crisis to crisis, and the country's presence on the global stage has been close to zero. That is why this tournament matters so much more than its youth label suggests.

The FIFA U-15 World Cup & Festival 2026 is the inaugural edition of a brand-new FIFA tournament, and the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) has confirmed this is the first time a Pakistani squad — junior or senior, men or women — will participate in a FIFA World Cup event. The 14 teenagers selected under head coach Ihsanullah Khan departed Islamabad on October 20 and have been settling into the athletes' village in Baku since, with barely four days to shake off the travel before the football begins.

They are among 78 FIFA member associations making their FIFA World Cup debut at this festival, and one of 191 member associations taking part overall — a genuinely global gathering of youth football.

How the tournament actually works

Forget everything you know about conventional World Cup formats. FIFA has designed this as a development festival first and a competition second:

• Eight-a-side football on smaller pitches (68m x 47m), with full-size goals measuring 7.32m x 2.44m. Matches are just two 20-minute halves.
• Only players born in 2011 or 2012 are eligible — every player on the pitch is 14 or 15.
• Teams are split into 32 groups for a round-robin qualification stage. Nearly 1,000 matches are scheduled across six matchdays at the Hovsan Competition Complex, with the opening ceremony and finals at Baku Crystal Hall.
• Here is the twist: nobody gets knocked out early. After the groups, results are used to sort all teams into six performance tiers. Every team then plays another four or five matches in the tournament stage (October 28-29) against opponents at its own level, and the tier finals take place on October 30. The Tier A winner is crowned the inaugural champion.
• The format is deliberate. FIFA's Chief of Global Football Development, Arsene Wenger, says the tournament was created because "talent exists everywhere, but young players do not always have the same opportunities to test themselves internationally." Short halves and small sides mean more touches, more minutes and more football for every teenager — not just the stars of the elite nations.

The girls' edition follows in 2027, and the boys' festival is set to become a regular fixture of the youth calendar thereafter.

Baku's venues, including the Hovsan Competition Complex, will host nearly 1,000 matches across six matchdays.

Pakistan's schedule: five matches in 72 hours

Pakistan have been drawn in Group AD alongside Gambia, South Sudan, Cyprus, Jordan and Nigeria. The qualification-stage schedule is relentless — all five matches in three days, with double-headers on the second and third days:

Date	Match	Kick-off (PKT)
October 24	Pakistan vs Gambia	3:30pm
October 25	Pakistan vs South Sudan	1:45pm
October 25	Pakistan vs Cyprus	8:30pm
October 26	Pakistan vs Jordan	12:30pm
October 26	Pakistan vs Nigeria	7:15pm

The opener against Gambia today is the one that matters most in footballing terms too. Gambia may be one of the less fancied African sides on paper, but West African youth football is famously physical and technically sharp — their youngsters grow up on the same street-football education that produced some of the continent's finest exports. For a Pakistan side playing its first-ever international tournament, a composed, disciplined opener is the realistic target: keep the shape, survive the early pressure, and take whatever the game offers.

The real tests come later. Nigeria's Future Eagles — drawn in the same group — arrived in Baku with a 14-player squad and coaching staff led by Patrick Bassey, and Nigeria's youth pedigree needs no introduction to anyone who follows world football. Jordan and Cyprus bring structured European-style youth development, while South Sudan, like Gambia, will be athletic and unpredictable.

Five different footballing cultures in three days. For 14- and 15-year-olds raised on Pakistan's patchy domestic scene, that is a crash course no training camp in the world can replicate.

The 14 young Shaheens

The final squad named by the PFF blends players from across the country — names most fans are hearing for the first time, which is exactly how it should be at a youth tournament:

Shayan Abdul Jabbar Marwat, Muhammad Salman, Muhammad Alam, Maqbool Ahmed, Shahraz Khan, Rameez Riza, Ameer Hamza, Muhammad Mustafa, Ilhan Khan Ali, Bakshi Hamal Khan, Owais Faiz, Zain ul Abideen, Danish Masih and Kaleem Ullah.

Coach Ihsanullah Khan finalised the group after national camps, and the federation has framed the tour explicitly as a development mission rather than a results-at-all-costs campaign. That is the right call. Win, lose or draw, these teenagers will return home with something no Pakistani footballer has ever had: FIFA tournament experience.

The 14 young Shaheens huddle up — Pakistan's first-ever squad at a FIFA World Cup event.

Why fans should mark this on the calendar

It is easy to be cynical about youth tournaments, but the moments that build a football culture start somewhere. Somewhere there is a generation of Pakistani kids who have never seen a Pakistani team at a World Cup of any kind — until today. The format means Pakistan will keep playing meaningful football all the way to October 30 regardless of results, so the education continues for a full week.

The opener against Gambia kicks off at 3:30pm PKT today, October 24. Set a reminder, find a stream, and watch the first page of a new chapter in Pakistani football. Whatever the scoreline, the young Shaheens have already made history by being there.

Sources: FIFA, Pakistan Football Federation via The News and Geo Super, WE News English, NextUp News, Arun Foot.