Santosh Trophy- All you need to know about its History and Fixtures of 2019

Santosh Trophy is an Indian football tournament in which the states of the country along with some government institutions participate under the All India Football Federation (AIFF), the sport’s governing body in India.

The Santosh Trophy was considered the top domestic championship in India before the first national club league that is the National Football League. The tournament is held every year and around 31 teams participate which are further divided into groups and are required to qualify the preliminary round to participate in the tournament. The most successful team is West Bengal with 32 titles.

History

The tournament was started in 1941 and is named after late Sir Manmatha Nath Roy Chowdhary of Santosh, now in Bangladesh who was the president of the Indian Football Association. There was a lack of proper main championships for football teams and the other main competitions were the Durand Cup, Rovers Cup, and the IFA Shield and thus to provide young players with opportunities,  AIDD made the Santosh Trophy into an under-23 competition in 1990. After 3 seasons, this tournament was changed to senior competition.

The IFA donated the Santosh Trophy, whereas the runner-up trophy was donated by an ex-IFA president, S.K. Gupta which is known as Kamla Gupta Trophy. Another trophy was donated by the Karnataka State Football Association.

This is seen as a platform that gives opportunities to other players to come up. Bob Houghton, who was a head coach of India, said that the tournament should be discontinued and is a complete waste of time. He was irked as during the tournament Sunil Chhetri injured himself in 2009 and thus had to miss the Nehru Cup. Then, later on, it was decided that the national team players would not be a part of this tournament anymore but the decision was reverted later. In 2013, AIFF decided that I-League players would not be allowed to participate in the Santosh Trophy.

2018-19 Santosh Trophy

The last tournament was the 73rd edition of the Santosh Trophy which was held from 8th April to 21st April 2019. Around 10 teams participated. It was the premier competition in India for teams representing their regional and state football associations. Services emerged as the Champions by bagging their 6th title and Punjab emerged as Runner-up. There were 23 matches played. The top goal scorers were Ayush Adhikari from Delhi and Arif Shaikh from Maharashtra with 6 goals. Though in 2017-18 season, Kerala were the defending champions and defeated West Bengal in the final but both teams were not able to qualify for the main round.

Records

• Inder Singh- Tournament top scorer (45 goals)

• Inder Singh- Most goals in a single tournament (23 goals in 1973-74)

• N. Paisley and Inder Singh- Most goals in a single match

Fixtures of 2018-19