Born on November 20, 1983, in Chaman, Mohammad Essa led the Pakistan football team for four years before announcing his retirement after a fallout with the team’s Austrian coach George Kottan in Dec 2009. He is being pressurised by all his fans to take back his emotional decision ever since, but he is more into coaching now.

The leading scorer (28 goals) for the national side, Essa is still praised for his brilliant goals during the 2004 and 2006 South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championships which Pakistan won and in which he scored five and four goals, respectively.

The Pakistan-India series in 2005 saw him being declared as the ‘Player of the Series’. He is also lauded for scoring the most important goal in the 14th Asian Cup (Group ‘C’) match to tie with the UAE on March 1, 2006. In 2007, he was awarded with the President’s Pride of Performance.