Kuwaiti Premier League - The Kazma and Salmiya Years

The Kazma and Salmiya Years

The 1980s, however, didn't only belong to Al-Arabi. Prior to 1981, there were only 3 Big teams in Kuwait. Those were Al-Arabi, Al-Qadsiya and Al-Kuwait. However, with the turn of the 1980s, newer teams were added to the equation. The big 3 became big 5 after new giants Kazma and Salmiya forced their way into joining the elite winners of Kuwait's football league. Perhaps not as illustruous as the other big 3 teams, Kazma and Salmiya did have their own golden moments, albeit short lived and certainly not as long as the ones experienced by Dave Mackay's Al-Arabi side or Jassem Yacob's magical Qadsiya of the 1970s. However, Kazma and Salmiya did become part of the "big 5" clubs nonetheless. Kazma's and Salmiya's success in the 1980s diversified the number of DIFFERENT teams winning the Kuwaiti football league title. This, according to many analysts, mightve saved Kuwait's football image in the region. Had the dominance remained only within the big-3, some say, it couldve destroyed football and bored the average football spectators. Seeing a new team winning the title was always a good thing to some, and certainly a beacon of hope for other teams to follow the same model. "Change every once in a while is a good thing", was one of the local newspaper headlines back in the 1980s newspaper sports columns. This referred to Kazma's back-to-back titles won in the late 1980s. The addition of new teams winning the league and being included in the ever-expanding "winners trophy list" encouraged other hopefuls into trying to copy the Kazma and Salmiya "underdog" model. And in season 1989/1990, Jahra became the first team outside Kuwait City to win the league title. This certainly added more flavour to the league and spiced up the diversity of title challengers. The league's competitiveness was at its peak during the 1989/1990 season. Things were moving forward. Unfortunately, however, progress was halted one year later after the 1990 Gulf War and Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.