India is a country where cricket is worshiped and all other sports are usually taken for granted. Some say that this is because, Indian football has not made an impact on an international level. Even though children in some parts of the country grow up playing football a lot more than cricket, thanks to the increased telecast of European football in India, this sport is becoming more popular day by day in schools and clubs. Along with it, the inception of Indian Super League, where legends like Alessandro Del Piero and Roberto Carlos play has drawn a lot of attention towards Indian football.
Let the talent show off!
However despite all this international buzz, most people don’t know much about the Subroto Cup which has always contributed hugely to Indian Football. Late Indian Air Marshal Subroto Mukherjee was the man behind this tournament as he believed that to grow more international level footballers in India, we need to start them young and thus, Subroto Cup was introduced.
No stopping for these
In the beginning, Subroto cup was only played in Delhi with teams from within the city. But now it has spread all over India and takes place in every state in the country. Basically, the tournament begins at the sub-division, district and division level and the inter-school finals take place at state level. After that, the main tournament takes place in Delhi inter-school state level competition winners.
Just go get it!
As Subroto Cup focuses on budding the young talent, it has proven its worth time to time. The major focus of this tournament is to dig talent from every corner of the country and provide it a national level exposure. Though Subroto Cup has not been able to cross the boundaries of India, it has invited few teams from Brazil, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Sweden, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to play at times. In fact, it took a giant leap when it announced the entry of women in 2011. After all, talent sees no gender.
Across all boundaries
Well, after years of great matches and hardworking players, Subroto Cup has truly given us some amazing football players like Shyam Thapa, Parimal Dey, Mohan Singh, Ajay Kumar Singh, Victor Amalraj, Prashanto Banerjee, Parminder Singh, Harjinder Singh, Shyamal Banerjee, Chinmoy Chatterjee, Kabir Bose, Baichung Bhutia, Sangram Mukherjee, Ashin Biswas and VP Satish Kumar among many others.
Yes, FIFA might seem like a long way to go for India but all we hope is more and more popularity of football and the Subroto Cup, in our country in the coming years.
Author Name: Kritika Sharma
