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Friday, Nov 04, 2005

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Santosh Trophy from today

Sports Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The 60th National senior championship for the Santosh Trophy, begins at the Chandrasekharan Nair stadium here and the Corporation stadium in Kozhikode from Friday.

The initial phase — to spot the four teams which will join the directly seeded host and holder Kerala, Services, Punjab and Manipur in the quarterfinal league — will feature 26 teams drawn in eight clusters. The winner each cluster will qualify for the final phase to be held in Kochi from November 11.

Bengal, the 29-time champion, led by Baichung Bhutia will the biggest draw in the Thiruvananthapuram leg.

Grouped along with Mizoram, Nagaland and Andhra Pradesh in Cluster VIII, Bengal will have few hiccups in qualifying for the quarterfinal league.

Former champion, Maharashtra, with a clutch of players who did duty for Mahindra United in the Federation Cup, starts as the favourite in Cluster III which also features Orissa, Jammu & Kashmir and Meghalaya.

Tamil Nadu should have little problems qualifying from Cluster V against Gujarat and Jharkhand. Delhi and Bihar will slug it out to qualify from Cluster II that also involves Himachal Pradesh.

Delhi takes on Himachal Pradesh in the opening match of the Thiruvanathapuram leg.

The train accident in Andhra Pradesh has delayed the arrival of many teams. Only five members of the Delhi squad are in Thiruvananthapuram and there is no clue about the arrival of other players.

Goa and Karnataka are the teams to watch out for in the Kozhikode leg, which kicks off at the Corporation Stadium with a match between two lightweights — Madhya Pradesh and Uttaranchal (Cluster I). Uttar Pradesh (the third team in Cluster I), Railways, Pondicherry, Assam and Chattisgarh (Cluster IV), Haryana and Chandigarh (Cluster VI), Sikkim, Rajasthan and Tripura (Cluster VII) complete the line-up.

Goa is unlikely to face any problem in Cluster VII. But the Goan coach Mauricio Alphonso said the team was not going to take its rivals lightly. "Overconfidence is not a good thing, you know," he said.

Talented performers

The Goans with talented performers like Clifford Miranda, Climax Lawrence, Mahesh Gawli and skipper Samir Naik are also certain to be the top attraction in Kozhikode. Karnataka, which should top Cluster VI, also boasts a couple of big names in Indian football and the team's coach S. Krishnaji Rao expects a lot from National captain S. Venkatesh, fresh from his brilliant performance at the Federation Cup in Margoa where he led Mahindra United to victory and striker R.C. Prakash. "Our team is a nice blend of youth and experience," he said. Eleven men in the Karanataka team are from HAL, which stunned fancied Dempo in the Federation Cup.

The Kozhikode District Football Association (KDFA) vice president A.K. Musthafa said that the season-ticket sales have been encouraging. " We do expect reasonable crowds, especially for the matches involving Goa and Karnataka," he said.

Three matches are scheduled for every day at both the centres. The preliminary league concludes on November 9.

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