Services retain Santosh Trophy National Football Championships title
Services retained the Santosh Trophy National Football Championships title beating hosts Maharashtra 2-1 in the summit clash. Arjun Tudu scored twice in the space of 11 minutes (26th and 37th) to help Services clinch their fifth title overall at the SEC Railway Stadium. Services took away Rs.5 lakh for winning the tournament while Maharashtra got Rs.3 lakh for finishing runners-up.
Santosh Trophy is an annual Indian football tournament, contested by states and government institutions. The trophy is given in the memory of late Maharaja Sir Manmatha Nath Roy Chowdhary of Santosh (now in Bangladesh). The tournament started in 1941 and the first winners were Bengal. Santosh Trophy was the premier football tournament of the country until 1996 when National Football League started.
West Bengal team lead the all-time winners list of the Santosh trophy, having won it 31 times, out of their 43 appearances in the event's final.
Santosh Trophy 2016 was the 70th edition of the tournament. Services are the defending champions of the trophy The tournament started from 6 Feb with the finals scheduled for 13 March in Nagpur. 33 teams from five zones (North, South, East, West, Nort East) played the qualifiers. Top two teams from each zone moved to the Group Stage of the tournament.
Ten teams qualified for Group Stage : Assam, Goa, J&K, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Punjab, Railways, Services, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The teams were equally distributed under Groups A and B. Each team played every other team in their repective group and top two from both groups advanced to semi-finals. Maharashtra, Services from Group A and Tamil Nadu, Goa from Group B moved to semis.
Four-time champions Services stunned formidable Goa 1-0 in the first semifinals while Maharashtra beat Tamil Nadu by a similar margin in the second semifinals. The lone goals in both the semi-finals were own goals.
