Mohammad Farid: Hyderabad's last top star
At a wedding reception in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, nearly a decade ago, one of the guests struck up a conversation with me. “You’re from Calcutta, so you must know Mohammad Farid,” he said. “He’s my first cousin—and he was a footballer.” When I told him that Farid, now 58, had been among the most popular footballers of the 1980s and early ’90s, he looked genuinely surprised. He admitted that the family had never really followed Farid’s career, largely because there wasn’t much interest in football at home. "We really didn't know about his achievements and, that he also played for India," he added. Not just him—in fact, most people outside Calcutta either never knew or have long forgotten this unassuming former attacking midfielder. One reason is the near absence of material about him online, barring a few yellowed pages of old Bengali football magazines. Farid began his senior career with Hyderabad City Police in 1974 and played there until 1977 before moving t...