Of growing passion of Pak Reds

Gone are the days when cricket was the only sport that gave Pakistanis a platform to unite on. Football has emerged as yet another platform of the nature, albeit not as magnificent as cricket yet, however its future looks promising with many people following the sport passionately. The English Premier League (EPL), which is England’s most important football competition, is widely and passionately followed by fans in Pakistan.

One story of passionate football supporters in Pakistan would be Pak Reds, which is a supporters club of Liverpool Football Club – one of the 20 competing teams of EPL and one of the greatest clubs in the world.

In 2011 Pak Reds – Official Liverpool Supporters Club Pakistan was launched by co-founders Nausherwan Effandi and Raheel Ahmed, which was the first club of its kind in the country. Completely self-managed and self-financed, Pak Reds has its own website (www.pakreds.pk) as well as almost 4000 plus members on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/PakReds) and a dedicated twitter following (http://twitter.com/#!/PakReds).

Pak Reds is devoted to promoting Liverpool and bringing Liverpool culture to Pakistan. It is not only promoting Liverpool as a football team and their presence on the field, it also aims to instill in its supporters the true spirit of being a Kopite (a specific term for a Liverpool supporter) and to help them embody the true ethos of being a Liverpool supporter complete with chants and Liverpool’s rich history.

The Club has three official venues in the main cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, where all Pak Reds members meet for match screenings which are arranged and financed by Pak Reds and managed by Haziq Naveed, Raheel Ahmed and Shakeeb Khan respectively, who are the coordinators assigned to each city. Apart from the coordinators it is only fair to mention Dan Quyyum, PR Manager and Bissmah Mehmud, Creative Head and Web administrator who work tirelessly to build the Pak Reds brand as an identity for Liverpool supporters in Pakistan.

Owing to the growing number of fans in Pakistan, recently Liverpool FC launched a Twitter account @pakistanlfc dedicated solely to tweets for the Pakistani fans. This was shortly followed by LFC announcing that they had added Pak Reds to their worldwide network of officially recognized branches, which is a clear indication of the rising popularity of LFC and football in Pakistan.

Being an official branch of Liverpool FC in Pakistan February 2013 onwards, Pak Reds is now the platform that unites all Liverpool fans in the country as well as those around the globe of Pakistani origin.