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Many of India’s biggest names in football had their foray into the competitive arena representing their schools at the Subroto Mukherjee Cup. SportsKeeda gives you a low down on the history and importance of this tournament. The Subroto Mukherjee Cup has been a trendsetter in Indian sports.
It was the first age-group sports tournament in India. It was launched in 1960 in memory of the late Air Marshal Subroto Mukherjee, an ardent football fan. For years, it was organized by the Durand football tournament committee. In 1994, the Air Force Sports Control took over the Subroto Cup tournament and has been conducting it since then.
The Subroto Cup started as a competition for schoolboys who were U-17 years of age. Preliminary tournaments are held in every state and union territories of India and the winners travel to Delhi to play in the final rounds. The boys stay in a camp during the tournament so that it also helps in national integration. In 1988, at the request of the School Games Federation of Indian (SGFI) the organizers started a sub-junior (11-14 years) football tournament, in which school teams from Bokaro, Mizoram and Meghalaya have excelled.
Since 1960, the Subroto Mukherjee Cup Football tournament has been a launching pad for many promising young players. The list is exhaustive and includes illustrious Indian internationals such as Parimal Dey, Mohan Singh, Shyam Thapa in the 1960s, Parminder Singh, Prasanta Banerjee and Shyamal Banerjee in the 1970s and Bruno Continho, Kabir Bose, Pratap Senapati and Thomas Khusboo in the 1980s.
Baichung Bhutia has also participated in the legendary tournament
In the last decade of the 20th century emerged stalwarts such as Baichung Bhutia, Ajay Kumar Singh, Bijen Singh, Amit Das and Sangram Mukherjee, all of whom initially dazzled in the Subroto Cup. Two outstanding players, from the Army boys units of Danapur and Bangalore respectively have emerged in the early years of the new millennium, namely goalkeeper V.P.Satish Kumar and striker Ashim Biswas.
In recent years junior internationals, Zaidinmawia, Pohshang Poibang and talented Sanju Pradhan (now playing for East Bengal) were first spotted in the Subroto Cup. Incidentally ex-international midfielder Parminder Singh was the first Subroto Cup scholarship winner to represent India at the senior level. The tournament committee introduced scholarships in 1972 and Parminder playing for State Sports School (SSS) Jalandhar got the coveted scholarship in 1974.
Baichung was a scholarship winner for Tashi Namgyal School, Gangtok in the early 1990s and Bijen Singh excelled for Sainik School, Imphal, in 1996 and was selected for the Indian schools team the same year. Next year, Bijen joined East Bengal. Midfielder Amit Das and goalkeeper Sangram Mukherjee won the trophy with Madhyamgram HS and Sukantangar Vidya Niketan, Calcutta respectively. Former international midfielder Ajay Kumar Singh also helped his school St.Ignatius Gumla emerge champions in 1990.
V.P. Satish Kumar, the Dempo goalkeeper excelled for his unit Army Boys Bangalore who finished as runner-ups in the 2001 Subroto Cup, whereas striker Ashim Biswas was in the Army Boys Danapur squad, runner-ups in 2000. However, it is as a nursery of talent that the Subroto Cup will always be remembered.
The impact on North East’s football
Now into its sixth decade, the Subroto Cup has spread the popularity of football all over India and teams from the remote islands of Andaman and Nicobar and distant Arunachal Pradesh have participated in India’s oldest age-group tournament. Above all the Subroto Cup’s greatest contribution is that it has brought to the foreground the latent talent in the North-East.
The fact that every club team in the recent National Football League or I-League competitions had players from the North-East, especially Manipur, is primarily due to the initial exposure provided by the Subroto Cup to players from this region. The first school team from the North-East to win the Subroto Cup was St. Anthony’s HS Shillong in 1978.
They beat Madhyamgram HS, West Bengal 1-0 in the final. The first all North-East final was in 1980 when Ibemcha HSS, Manipur beat Govt. HSS Kokrajhar, Assam 1-0. In 1986 for the first time, three schools from the North-East reached the last four of the Subroto Cup. In the 1970’s and the early eighties, talented players from the North-East region were spotted in the Subroto Cup, unfortunately though they faded as they got little exposure at the senior level.
But all that has changed. In the recent past, there has been a re-thinking on the concept of developing football talent from the North-East. In 2004-05, the All India Football Federation with the help of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) launched an ambitious Vision India programme in Manipur.
This programme with its emphasis on broad-basing the game and improving the quality of coaches has added to the popularity of the game in Manipur. The Indian Air Force (IAF) is recruiting promising players from Mizoram and the North-East on a stipend basis, to play for their senior team.
Ultimately it was Subroto Mukherjee Cup that revealed the abundance of talent in the North-East. The Subroto Cup has evidently been the platform for a right start to our budding football stars. And definitely, the tournament is a must-watch for anybody interested in spotting a future star.
