How good were Mohammedan Sporting Club back in the 1980s?
They were unbeaten in the first division league from 8 September 1985 to 15 March 1990.
Mohammedan Sporting Club (MSC), the Black and Whites, was one of the most successful clubs in Bangladesh football. Especially, back in the 1980s, they were ruthless and were winning trophies for fun.
MSC was a sporting giant in the true sense of the word having one of the largest fan bases in the country back then.
Before diving deep into their glorious decade of success, we look back at how the club started.
The journey began in Hajaribagh back in 1927. Members of the Nawab family of Dhaka established Muslim Sports Club as they wanted to establish a local club for the youth. A few years later, it was renamed Mohammedan Sporting Club, after its more renowned predecessor the Kolkata Mohammedan.
The club aimed to create enthusiasm for sports amongst the local Muslim community, but it soon broke the race.
Mohammedan as a club started flying in the late 1950s. They won their first league title in 1957. The same year they won the Independence Cup, thus ensuring their domestic double. The trophies kept coming over the next two decades where they won the Dhaka League title in the year 1959, '61,'63,'66, and '69.
Mohammedan won the Aga Khan Gold Cup for the first time in 1959. They repeated the feat twice, in 1964 and 1968.
Talking about being ruthless, MSC won Federation Cup four times in a row from 1980 to 1983. They were invincibles. MSC had some legendary footballers like Kaiser Hamid, Badal Roy, Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury, Imtiaz Sultan Jonny in their squad back then.
They won the Federation Cup six times in that very decade.
MSC has won the Federation Cup ten times in total and they beat their arch-rivals Dhaka Abahani in the final six times.
They were unbeaten in the first division league from 8 September 1985 to 15 March 1990. Mohammedan did not lose a single match in those one thousand six hundred and fifty days winning 63 of them, drawing 12 times and 1 ended up being postponed. They scored 160 and conceded 22 goals. The Black and Whites took the league title three times in a row from 1986 to 1988.
Apart from that, MSC bagged the Ashis-Jabbar Shield Tournament in 1982.
Dhaka Mohammedan used to be the most dominating force in continental competitions among Bangladeshi clubs as well. They made it to the Asian Club Championship (the then Asian Champions League) finals in 1988 thus becoming the first-ever Bangladeshi club to do so. They participated in this tournament a record six times making it to the finals thrice, a record yet to be matched by any South Asian club.
Mohammedan's glory days are long gone. The once favorite club started losing its appeal and charm due to lackluster management at the turn of the millennium. Silverwares dried off soon. The club has not won a football league title for almost two decades now. And with the recent casino busts, they are in all sorts of trouble. One can only hope that their golden days will return soon and they will again start winning trophies for fun.
