Kazi Salahuddin

Kazi Md. Salahuddin (কাজী সালাউদ্দিন; born 23 September 1953) is a Bangladeshi former football player currently serving as the president of South Asian Football Federation and Bangladesh Football Federation.

Kazi Salahuddin was born on 23 September 1953 to an elite family in Dacca, East Bengal.

His father, Kazi Muhammad Shahi, was a businessman, and his mother, Begum Simki Shafi, was a housewife.

He belongs to the Kazi family of Rajapur in Faridpur District.

The family was founded by Kazi Abdur Rasool, son of Shah Azimuddin, who was said to have been descended from the Arab Muslim general Khalid ibn al-Walid and had been appointed as Kazi in Mughal Bengal.

He was enrolled in BAF Shaheen College Dhaka before moving to Dhaka College and eventually got into Dhaka University.

While Salahuddin was in seventh grade at Shaheen College, he became involved with athletics and was selected for his school football team as the youngest member of the team.

This attracted the interest of Ex-Pakistani international footballer Chunna Rashid.

In 1966, he played two matches as a goalkeeper for Gamma Sports Association in the Dhaka Third Division League.

In 1968, Salahuddin started playing cricket for Azad Boys in the Premier Division Cricket League.

Later that year, at the request of his sports teacher, Salahuddin played as a striker for Dilkusha SC in Dhaka Second Division League.

Following a troublesome period, Dilkusha won the championship that season and were promoted to the top-tier, the Dhaka League, while Salahuddin became the second division's highest goal scorer with 14 goals.

In 1968, Salahuddin was called up to the East Pakistan Youth Team for the Pakistan National Youth Championship, and in the following year, Abdul Hashem, impressed by the young striker, signed him for Wari Club in the Dhaka League.

In his first league game with Wari, he scored a hat-trick against Rahmatganj MFS, and ended the season with a total of 18 league goals.

He has been Dhaka League top scorer five times in 1969, 1973, 1977, 1979 and 1980.

By his first season at the top-tier, Salahuddin had made a name for himself as the country's youngest football prospect and, in 1970, he was snatched up by Mohammedan SC, the leading club of East Pakistan.

He was a member of the Shadhin Bangla Football Team, which played across India to raise awareness about the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.

Salahuddin spent his debut season as a reserve player, while his team were edged to the league title by East Pakistan IDC, and when the Bangladesh Liberation War commenced in 1971, league football was stopped for over a year.

At the start of 1971, Salahuddin went to West Pakistan to play in the regional championship for Dhaka.

After the tournament he was called to join the camp for the Pakistan national football team.

He came back to Dhaka on 20 March but was only in the country for five days when a planned military pacification carried out by the Pakistan Army to curb the Bengali nationalist movement in erstwhile East Pakistan called Operation Searchlight started.

His family wanted him to go to London, however, Salahuddin wanted to take part in the Bangladesh Liberation War.

His father agreed and he crossed the border to reach Agartala where he joined the training camp for the guerilla soldiers.

In 1971, he heard about Shadhin Bangla Football Team, a team of Bangladeshi football players who played in India to raise money and awareness about the war, from a photo journalist.

The journalist, from Kolkata, convinced him to play for the team and explained to him the importance about growing public support for the war.

Salahuddin decided to play and went to Kolkata on a Cargo Plane of the Indian Air Force.

In Kolkata, he met with many of his teammates from Dhaka and played his first match for the team against Nadia XI, from Nadia district, on 26 July 1971.

That day Salahuddin accompanied Enayetur Rahman Khan, in the team's forward line, as the game ended 2–2.

He was also named as the Sports Writers Association's Best Football Player and Best Coach in 1979 and 1992 respectively.

He holds the record of scoring the country's first ever goal at the AFC Asian Cup, coming in their maiden appearance in the tournament in 1980.

He played for and captained the Bangladesh national team, retiring in 1983.

Salahuddin is the first football player from the country to play abroad in the professional league in Hong Kong and is considered to be Bangladsh's first professional sports athlete.

In domestic football, he has 139 goals in the Dhaka League and 14 goals in the Dhaka Second Division League.

He is the second highest goal scorer in Bangladeshi top-tier football and is one of the two players to have scored 150 goals in domestic football, both his records come second to Sheikh Mohammad Aslam.

In international football he has scored 8 goals for the Bangladesh national team in 31 official games.

Salahuddin was appointed as the head coach of Bangladesh on four occasions in 1985, 1987, 1993 and 1994.

As the coach of his former club Abahani Limited Dhaka he won the Dhaka League in both 1985 and 1992.

Salahuddin also had less successful coaching spells with Brothers Union and Muktijoddha Sangsad KC in 1988 and 1994 respectively.

His contribution to football has seen him win numerous accolades, most notably the Independence Day Award in 1996, which is the highest state award given by the country's government.

As the president of Bangladesh Football Federation, he introduced the Bangladesh Super Cup in 2009 and a second-tier professional league, the Bangladesh Championship League in 2012.