“Home to 116 registered football clubs, Lyari has, for years, housed the most ardent sports fans. Sports that are relatively unknown or unpopular in the rest of Pakistan are played in neighbourhood parks here. There is a gym at every corner for body-builders, over eight football stadiums (jam-packed every evening) and boxing rings. A world-famous boxing champion, Muhammed Hussain, rose from here and the Pakistan football team that won the Gold Medal at the 2004 South Asian Federation (SAF) Games included a number of players from Lyari — a testament to Lyari’s potential in sports. Ali Nawaz Baloch, former captain of Pakistan’s national football team and a resident of Lyari, says it is important to encourage and support the talent pool in Lyari.”
The above paragraph was part of a special report published by Newsline on the football fanatics of Lyari in July 2010. That article, by Maheen Bashir Adamjee and published during the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, can be found here.
Below are some bonus photos from Lyari by Newsline photographer Danish Khan that never were published at the time. We pulled them from our archives in our end-of-year ‘inventory’ as we took stock of our news coverage for the year. We hope you enjoy them. Of course, you can see the originally published photo gallery with 13 more of Danish’s photos at the end of the above-mentioned article.
“Home to 116 registered football clubs, Lyari has, for years, housed the most ardent sports fans. Sports that are relatively unknown or unpopular in the rest of Pakistan are played in neighbourhood parks here. There is a gym at every corner for body-builders, over eight football stadiums (jam-packed every evening) and boxing rings. A world-famous boxing champion, Muhammed Hussain, rose from here and the Pakistan football team that won the Gold Medal at the 2004 South Asian Federation (SAF) Games included a number of players from Lyari — a testament to Lyari’s potential in sports. Ali Nawaz Baloch, former captain of Pakistan’s national football team and a resident of Lyari, says it is important to encourage and support the talent pool in Lyari.”