Premier Indian domestic football tournament Santosh Trophy returns to Hyderabad after 57 years
Hyderabad: The final rounds of India’s premier domestic football tournament, the Santosh Trophy, will be played in Hyderabad after a gap of more than five decades. The final rounds will be played at the Gachibowli Stadium, in Hyderabad, in December.
The All India Football Federation (AIFF) will announce the dates of the Santosh Trophy shortly. The final rounds will be tentatively played in the first week of December.
Services are the defending champions of the Santosh Trophy, having beat Goa 1-0 in the final at Yupia, near Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh, last year.
The last time Hyderabad hosted the prestigious all-India football tournament, also known as football’s national championship with the trophy referred to as the Santosh Trophy, was in the 1966-67 season. Railways beat Services 2-0 to win the tournament, which was an all-institution final then.
Telangana will directly play the final rounds as they have received a bye as they are the host association.
The teams have been divided into nine groups for the preliminary rounds. Seven groups have four teams each while one group has three teams and another has five teams in them.
The winners of the nine groups and the last season’s finalists – Services and Goa – along with Telangana will play in the final rounds scheduled in Hyderabad.
The group stage matches – the preliminary rounds – will be played in November 2024.
Groups for preliminary rounds:
Group A: Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.
Group B: Chandigarh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Delhi.
Group C: Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bengal and Bihar.
Group D: Assam, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Tripura.
Group E: Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.
Group F: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.
Group G: Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Andaman & Nicobar.
Group H: Kerala, Pondicherry, Lakshadweep and Railways.
Group I: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu and Rajasthan.