At the Santosh Trophy final at the King Fahd International Stadium in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, the 54 years wait came to an end with Karnataka defeating Meghalaya with a dominant 3-2 victory.
The Indian state teams compete in the Santosh Trophy, an Annual Football Competition. The competition has the name of late Maharaja Sir Manmatha Nath Roy Chowdhary of Santosh, who presided over the Indian Football Association (IFA) from 1933 to 1935.
Santosh Trophy is India’s one of the most renowned football competitions, first played in the year 1941 and since then it has been held every year between January and March, where the All India Football Federation (AIFF) hosts the competition.
Hero MotoCorp, a major two-wheeler company in India, is the sponsor of the Santosh Trophy, an annual football competition. The organization has been the event’s title sponsor since 2018 and has been instrumental in advancing and supporting football in India. Hero MotoCorp and the All India Football Federation (AIFF) have partnered to promote the Santosh Trophy and give young and aspiring footballers a stage on which to demonstrate their abilities.
In this tournament team’s best players are represented in the competition, which includes teams from all Indian states and union territories. The competition is conducted in a knockout format, where the victor of each match advances to the next round.
Bengal has shown its predominance in Santosh Trophy ever since it first started and till now it holds a record of winning 32 titles. But this year the hard work of Karnataka had paid off creating supremacy in the game itself.
The Karnataka football squad is an Indian football team that competes in Indian state football tournaments like the Santosh Trophy on behalf of the state of Karnataka. They’ve made nine Santosh Trophy final appearances and won the award four times. The group competed as the Mysore football team before 1972. They made it to the semifinals of the 1969 Asian Champion Club Competition (now known as the AFC Champions League) (then known as Mysore State).
Conclusion
Despite the state being the major producer of finest footballers, Karnataka State Football Association’s cupboards lay empty, since Mysore won Karnataka did not. But this win gave a name and a trophy to the unheard. The top athletes from 28 states and 8 Union territories of India compete against each other to get to the top in football and The Santosh Trophy is one of their milestones through the journey.
Here Karnataka Football Association involvement in scouting the best players and providing them a platform to showcase their best skills and abilities will definitely verdict many more trophies to the association.
