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Spread over a month and a half, the Subroto Cup is without a doubt one of the Armed Services’ most potent gift to Indian football. As we approach the final of this year’s event, here’s a lowdown on the history and evolution of the tourney.
Initiation
The idea of having a junior football tournament was first conceived in 1958 by (Late) Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee, a keen soccer lover whilst he was the Chief of the Air Staff. According to him, football needed to be encouraged at grass root level in order to realise the growth of the game in the country. His concept first took shape when Subroto Mukerjee Sports Education Society was formed in 1960 after his untimely demise in Tokyo. The first tournament was also played the same year. At the time of the inauguration of the tournament, the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, while offering condolence to this great visionary suggested that the tournament be named after the late Air Marshal. Thus, started Subroto Mukerjee Cup Football Tournament open to school teams only. Having started in the year 1960, the tournament was played between the teams from Delhi for the Junior Boys category only.
Unique Format
Preliminary inter school tournaments take place in every state and union territory of India. The tournaments start at the sub-division, district and division level, while the inter school finals are held at the state level. The school teams that win the state level interschool championship qualifies to participate in the main event in Delhi.
Development at the grassroots
The Sub-Junior (11 to 14 years) category was started in the year 1998, on the request of the School Games Federation of India. Starting from a meagre 50 school teams, participating in the preliminary inter school championships, held in various states in 1960, today, as many as 32000 schools, nationwide, vie with each other to participate in the main Subroto Cup International Football Tournament, held at Delhi. This spurt in participation is indicating of the enthusiasm that has been generated at the school level. There is no game saying that no other organisation in the country has succeeded in broad basing participation in football at such a massive scale. It is the only tournament of its kind, not only in this country, but also in the entire soccer world.
Foreign participation
In addition to providing a national level platform to the young budding footballers of our country, the society started inviting teams from friendly foreign nations in the prescribed age category with the sole aim to ensure ample match exposure to foreign counterparts. This has definitely enhanced the standards of our young talents and this always worked as a catalyst in keeping up the morale of all the participants. Teams from Brazil, Sweden, Indonesia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Israel, UK, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have taken part in this prestigious international event.
Promoting womens fooball
In the year 2011, Subroto Cup has made a massive revolution in the history of Indian Football by creating a gateway to the Junior Girls to compete each other with an aim to encourage women empowerment. Initially, in the year 2011, tournament was conducted for the teams from Delhi & NCR in which 12 teams have participated. In 2012, it was widened to PAN India level and the participation has gone up to 29 teams this year including a team from Afghanistan. The story of Haryana Girls has touched everyone’s heart which is only because of football.
Churning out legends
has played a pivotal role in contributing its part to the nation by providing the greatest footballers who have represented our country and brought laurels. Also, many of the talents who are now representing the top clubs in India have come up through Subroto Cup only. These players always cherish and proudly state that participating in Subroto Cup was a turning point in their lives. Some of the players are : Shyam Thapa, Parimal Dey, Mohan Singh, Ajay Kumar Singh, Victor Amalraj, Prashanto Banerje, Parminder Singh, Harjinder Singh, Shyamal Banerjee, Chinmoy Chatterjee, Kabir Bose, Baichung Bhutia, Sangram Mukerjee, Pratap Senapati, VP Sathyan, Bijen Singh, Amit Das, Ashin Biswas, VP Satish Kumar, Nirmal Chhetri, Robin Singh and Jackie Chand Singh
