Santosh Trophy: Indian football tournament 2022

Santosh Trophy is an Indian football tournament in which the states of the country along with some government institutions participate. This is held annually since 1941. Bengal was the first winner of the competition held in 1941. The trophy is named after the late Maharaja Sir Manmatha Nath Roy Chowdhary of Santosh, now in Bangladesh. Sir Manmatha had been the President of the Indian Football Association.

Types of trophies distributed to Winner & runner-ups:

• Santosh Trophy is given to the winner of the tournament.
• The runners-up trophy is called Kamla Gupta Trophy, which was donated by the late Dr S.K. Gupta, former president of the Indian Football Association, in memory of his wife.
• The trophy given to the team finishing third is called the Sampangi Cup, which was presented by the Mysore Football Association (now KFSA) in 1952, in the memory of Sampangi who was a renowned footballer from Mysore.

Format of the tournament:

• The format for the tournament has kept changing over the years. At present, the teams are divided into eight groups, each of which has three or four teams.
• The eight winners from each group are then drawn along with four seeded teams, who do not have to go through the qualifying rounds, and these twelve teams are divided in groups of three each.
• This is the quarter-final stage and from there the semi-final and final.

Final appearances

Bengal has won Santosh Trophy a record 32 times, followed by Punjab who has won it 8 times. Kerala placed at 3rd position with 6 trophies.

Current teams

• Andaman and Nicobar Islands
• Andhra Pradesh
• Arunachal Pradesh
• Assam
• Bihar
• Chandigarh
• Chhattisgarh
• Daman and Diu
• Dadra and Nagar Haveli
• Delhi
• Goa
• Gujarat
• Haryana
• Himachal Pradesh
• Jammu and Kashmir
• Jharkhand
• Karnataka
• Kerala
• Lakshadweep
• Madhya Pradesh
• Maharashtra
• Manipur
• Meghalaya
• Mizoram
• Nagaland
• Odisha
• Puducherry
• Punjab
• Rajasthan
• Railways
• Services
• Sikkim
• Tamil Nadu
• Telangana
• Tripura
• Uttar Pradesh
• Uttarakhand
• West Bengal

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