I moved from Karachi to a village in Abbottabad as a kid. I was new to the school and still trying to find my place. Back in Karachi, I had played football and even led my team as captain until sixth grade. So the first thing I did was ask my class teacher if I could join the school football team.
He said no. He told me it would ruin my education. Football, in his eyes, was for boys who were rough and tough, boys not interested in studies. I was good at my studies, and that seemed to be the problem. I also hadn’t found my footing with the other boys yet, so I didn’t push back. Life moved on. It became education and a shop, and not much else for a while.
Fearless on the Field
Before all that, I played without thinking twice. I sprinted hard. I tackled without holding back. I hit the ball deep into the opposite D. I never worried if it would hit me or hit someone else. I played goalie, defence, forward, whatever the team needed. I dove into the soil ground to stop goals. My friends started calling me Jonty Rhodes.
Even at nine or ten, before I knew anything about formations, I noticed something. Everyone ran behind the ball. Nobody held their position. Nobody passed properly, except the goalie, who had no choice but to stay put. So I started drawing formations on paper. I gave everyone a spot to hold. It didn’t solve the whole problem, most players still chased the ball, but a few held their ground. It helped us win a few games.
There is an old line from Johan Cruyff, one of the players who changed how the world thinks about football: football is a game you play with your mind. I didn’t know his name back then, and I didn’t know the word tactics either. But that is exactly what I was reaching for with a pencil and a piece of paper, long before I had any formal idea of what a formation was.
I also noticed everyone was pushing everyone to get the ball. So I made a rule with the opposing team’s captain, who was also my classmate. No pushing. During the game, they kept doing it anyway, and it made me angry. Out of anger, I pushed a player from the other team. It was my friend. We were near the boundary wall, and his head hit it. He fainted. He recovered quickly with immediate attention, and there were no lasting consequences. But I felt ashamed for pushing him.
From the Field to the Screen
Football didn’t leave my life. It just changed shape for a while. I started playing on computer and mobile, and that is where I actually learned about formations and tactics. It became one of my favourite games. Not just for the physical side, but for the thinking behind it. Building momentum. Working as a team. Winning with mental power, not just physical power.
That interest is probably why I got drawn to humanoid RoboCup. For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, RoboCup is an international competition where teams of humanoid robots play football against each other, built and coded by university researchers from around the world. It started in 1997, and the football side of it has run every year since, with a long-term goal set from the start: build a team of robots that can beat the human World Cup champions by 2050. It sounds far off, but every year the robots get a little faster, a little steadier on their feet, and a little better at passing and reading the game as a team, which is the same thing I was trying to teach eleven-year-olds on a piece of paper, just with far more engineering behind it.
In 2015, NUST was the only university in Pakistan with a humanoid team. I wanted to join the group building and researching these robots. So I did my Master’s in that department. But it didn’t work out the way I imagined. I was doing a full-time job alongside my Master’s, and my pace didn’t match the student developers on the team. They were students first, so professionalism was a bit lacking on their side. Eventually, I let go of the idea and did my research in a different area instead.
Looking back, that pull toward RoboCup wasn’t really separate from the football I grew up with. It was the same instinct in a different form: watching how individual pieces come together into something coordinated, and wanting to be the one shaping how they fit. That is not far from what I do today in product management. A product team is not that different from a football team on paper. Everyone has a position. Someone needs to hold the shape while others push forward. And the plan on paper only means something once people actually follow it on the field, which is a lesson I learned at nine years old and am still relearning at work.
During that same period, I also played football sometimes with colleagues. And I kept playing with them even after my Master’s ended. It was a good way to stay active and stay close to the game, in a much simpler way than RoboCup ever offered.
Watching From the Sidelines
It has been around four or five years since I last played football physically. Family and job took over, the way they usually do. But the game never really left my head. When I watch a team move well together, or fall apart because the synergy just isn’t there, I still notice it. The same way I noticed it as a nine year old drawing formations on paper. It reminds me how technical and challenging this game really is, far beyond just running and kicking a ball.
What pulled this whole story out of me was the FIFA World Cup 2026, which just wrapped up in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It was the first World Cup with three host countries and the first with 48 teams instead of 32, the biggest edition the tournament has ever had. Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in extra time in the final, with Ferran Torres scoring the winner, and it was likely the last World Cup final for Lionel Messi, who has been one of the most watched players of my lifetime. After the win, Spain’s coach Luis de la Fuente summed up the whole tournament in one line: together we are stronger, let there be no doubt about that. That is the same idea I was chasing with formations on paper as a child, just said by a coach standing on the biggest stage in the sport.
Watching highlights of it also made me think about where Pakistan stands in the game. Our national team is currently ranked close to the bottom of FIFA’s world rankings, and we have never qualified for a World Cup. But there is a strange kind of pride sitting next to that. The official match ball for this World Cup, the Trionda, was made in Sialkot, a city in Pakistan that produces a large share of the world’s footballs by hand, and has supplied the official ball for the tournament since 2014. So even though no Pakistani team walked onto that field in 2026, a ball made by Pakistani hands did, in every single match. It’s a strange mix. Part of the game in one way, and missing from it in another.
I am not playing football these days but here a few things we can learn.
- How to read a situation before reacting.
- How teamwork beats individual effort.
- And how being fearless only works when it comes with a plan.