Pakistan Names 14-Member Squad for Historic FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival 2026 in Azerbaijan

By Imran Javed · Sports Desk · Updated October 17, 2026

Pakistan has named its 14-member travelling squad for the FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival 2026 in Azerbaijan — the first Pakistani squad ever selected for a FIFA World Cup event at any level. The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) confirmed the squad in a press release on Friday, October 16, 2026, with head coach Ihsanullah Khan leading the young Shaheens to Baku from Islamabad on October 20. Below is the complete 14-player squad list, Pakistan’s group and fixtures, the tournament format, and what this milestone means for football in the country.

The 14 young Shaheens: full squad list

The final travelling squad, announced by head coach Ihsanullah Khan, is:

1. Shayan Abdul Jabbar Marwat
2. Mohammad Salman
3. Mohammad Alam
4. Maqbool Ahmed
5. Shahraz Khan
6. Rameez Riza
7. Ameer Hamza
8. Mohammad Mustafa
9. Ilhan Khan Ali
10. Bakshi Hamal Khan
11. Owais Faiz
12. Zain ul Abideen
13. Danish Masih
14. Kaleem Ullah

These fourteen players were chosen from the country’s top young football talent through their performances at the PFF National U-17 Championship 2026, held earlier in October. The PFF had named a 21-player provisional squad and opened a national training camp in Lahore on October 6, where the final fourteen earned their places for the Baku trip.

Why this is a landmark moment for Pakistan football

Let me put this plainly: Pakistani teams have played international football for decades, but no Pakistan squad has ever appeared at a FIFA World Cup event at any level — not the seniors, not the juniors, not anyone. This U-15 side changes that. It is the inaugural edition of FIFA’s U-15 World Cup and Festival, and Pakistan is part of it from day one.

The PFF has called the participation a landmark for Pakistan football, and for good reason. The tournament is FIFA’s attempt to build the U-15 World Cup into a regular fixture of the international calendar, with the first girls’ tournament scheduled next year and both boys’ and girls’ editions planned annually from 2028. Pakistan arriving at the very first edition puts the country on the map of a competition that could shape youth football for a generation.

For the players, the value is exposure. A fourteen-year-old from this squad will spend six matchdays in Baku testing himself against styles of football he has never faced — West African athleticism from Gambia and Nigeria, European organisation from Cyprus, and different Asian approaches from Jordan and South Sudan. That kind of schooling cannot be replicated in a domestic camp in Lahore.

Tournament format: how the FIFA U-15 World Cup works

This is not a conventional knockout tournament. FIFA has designed the U-15 World Cup and Festival in two stages to give young players maximum match time:

• Qualification stage — October 24 to 26: Teams are split into 32 groups (a total of 191 nations are taking part). Each group plays a round-robin.
• Rest day — October 27.
• Tournament stage — October 28 to 30: Group winners advance to the Tier A competition; the rest are sorted into five other performance tiers based on their qualification results. Each tier has its own winner, and the Tier A winner is crowned the inaugural champion.

Matches are played 8-a-side with 20-minute halves — a format designed for player development rather than spectacle. Nearly 1,000 matches are scheduled across the six matchdays, with most played at the Hovsan Competition Complex in Baku and the opening match and tier finals on October 30 at Baku Crystal Hall.

Pakistan’s group and fixtures

Pakistan have been drawn in Group AD with Gambia, South Sudan, Cyprus, Jordan and Nigeria. The young Shaheens’ qualification schedule:

• October 24: Pakistan vs Gambia (opener)
• October 25: Pakistan vs South Sudan, and Pakistan vs Cyprus
• October 26: Pakistan vs Jordan, and Pakistan vs Nigeria

Five matches in three days, each just forty minutes plus stoppages, means squad rotation and stamina management will matter as much as skill. With only fourteen players travelling, coach Ihsanullah Khan has a thin bench by design — every player will be needed.

Coach Ihsanullah Khan’s mission

The PFF’s choice of head coach Ihsanullah Khan signals a focus on youth development rather than short-term results. His brief is clear from the press release: get these players international exposure, let them experience different footballing cultures, and bring home lessons that feed back into the PFF’s youth pipeline.

The selection pathway supports that reading. Rather than a one-off trial, the federation ran the squad through the National U-17 Championship and a national camp — a process designed to identify genuinely emerging talent rather than politically convenient names. For Pakistani football fans who have watched selections questioned for years, that is a meaningful detail.

What comes next for Pakistan’s young Shaheens

The Baku trip is the start of a cycle, not a one-off. FIFA plans the girls’ edition next year and annual tournaments from 2028, which means today’s U-15s are tomorrow’s U-17 and U-20 pool. A player who handles Nigeria’s pace or Cyprus’s organisation at fifteen is a player the senior system can use at nineteen.

The honest test for the PFF is what happens on October 31, the day after the finals. Will these fourteen get tracked, kept in camps, and played in the next age group — or will they scatter back to district football? Pakistan’s football history is full of promising juniors who disappeared. If this squad is going to be a genuine landmark rather than a nice photograph, the federation’s follow-through matters more than any single result in Baku.

For now, though, the football world is watching a first: Pakistan at a FIFA World Cup. Whatever happens in Group AD, that sentence was not writable before October 16, 2026. It is now.

Football fans tracking Pakistan’s year in the global game can also read about Messi’s farewell from Argentina and Ronaldo’s 980th career goal in the Saudi Pro League.

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