History
The Club was founded in 1962 as the Mahindra & Mahindra Allied Sports Club under the patronage of the Mahindra Group. The Club secured admission into Bombay's Harwood League in 1964. In the summer of 2000, the Club was renamed Mahindra United. The shirt colour was also changed from orange to red.
The team played its NFL home matches at the Cooperage Ground in Mumbai, but due to the bad state of the stadium, as of February 7, 2006, they had to play almost all of their NFL games away from Mumbai.
The club finished the inaugural season of the NFL Premier Division at the bottom of the table, but were not relegated as there was no second tier in the league at the time.
Mahindra were crowned champions of the NFL Premier Division for the first time in the club's history in the 2005-06 season with two games to spare. They followed it up by beating their arch-rivals, Air India for the first time in the season. They are also two-time winners of the Federation Cup, having won the title in 2003 and 2005. The win in 2005 ensured that Mahindra became the first club in the history of Indian football to win the Federation Cup and National Football League double in the same season. They did however lose the NFL Super Cup to East Bengal by a margin of 1-2.
The coach of the team was Derrick Pereira. Players like Subhashish Roy Chowdhury, Manjit Singh and Surojit Bose have been associated with the team. The club also tried forming under-15 and under-19 teams in order to nurture the young talent in the country.
Read more about this topic: Mahindra United
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