Bangladesh-based football media platform Plaantik has published a first-of-its-kind book in the form of an anthology on Bangladesh's unique football culture.
Titled “Plaantik: An Anthology of Bangladesh's Football Culture”, the book boasts a star-studded list of authors, including Bangladesh men's and women's national team captains Jamal Bhuiyan and Sabina Khatun, British Bangladeshi Hamza Choudhury, who plays for English club Watford on loan from Leicester City, Anwar Uddin MBE, Reshmin Chowdhury, and many more.
The following excerpt, from an essay by Azman Salid titled “The Kingback,” has been taken from the book. The writer is the son of legendary Bangladeshi defender Monem Munna, who distinguished himself with his performances in the World Cup qualifiers of 1990.
You can order your copy at plaantik.com/book.
“It's come at last,” says John Helm in commentary as Iran finally score, from a corner, in the final stages of their World Cup qualification match against Bangladesh. The clip of the goal, televised on Eurosport, is now lost somewhere in the depths of YouTube. The thousands of fans at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran had gone berserk. The match ended 1-0 in Iran's favour, keeping their hopes of reaching the 1990 World Cup in Italy alive, but it was eventually not enough in the end. For Bangladesh, it was a herculean effort to keep the strong Iranian attack at bay for so long away from home. One defender, in particular, caught the eye that day.
A Bangladeshi journalist sat in the media zone during the 1998 World Cup in France when he came across a couple of journalists from Iran. Referring to the 1990 qualification match, they were eulogising that one defender. They said the match was almost Monem Munna vs. Iran. Nearly a decade on, that performance was not forgotten by the Iranians.
When Mamunul Islam, the former captain of the Bangladesh national team, played for Atletico de Kolkata in the Indian Super League in 2014, he stumbled upon a photo of Munna in one of the shops at the New Market in Kolkata. Intrigued, he asked the shopkeeper and later found out the shop had been inaugurated by Munna when he was playing in Kolkata for East Bengal Club in the early 1990s.
Munna's performances for East Bengal endeared him to many in Kolkata, and the shopkeeper was one of many who fondly remember him even to this day. When Munna was at East Bengal in the twilight of his career, he was training alongside a rookie who later went on to captain the Indian national team. He left a mark on the young Baichung Bhutia with his self-confidence and experience.
And, of course, who can forget what Otto Pfister, the former coach of the Bangladesh national team and later the coach of Togo in the 2006 World Cup, said about Munna? For the German, Munna was so good that he felt he was mistakenly born in Bangladesh. Munna's leadership and Pfister's management had guided Bangladesh to their first ever international trophy in 1995.
I can go on for pages telling you what others have said about my late father. I was not even born during his heyday and was too young to remember him as a coach barring a few memories. He used to take me to training, where I watched the players from afar. I was about six when his life was cut short after a series of kidney-related complications. He had so much more to give. His coaching career will forever remain a case of ‘what if.' He might have gone on to manage the Bangladesh national team and maybe even abroad. He left us all when he was just 39.