The Subroto Cup International Football Tournament (esb 1960), a grassroots inter-school tournament played in three categories (U 17 Boys & Girls and U 15 Boys) and conducted by the Air Force Sports Control Board, is in its 63rd edition this year (2024). And, it is the month of August, when the thrilling league matches were played in Delhi leading to exciting finals and jubilant trophy winners. Importantly the matches were streamed live for wider audience.
With over 2,100 schools battling their way to the top all the year for this prestigious international tournament, it was left to 111 state champions and 8 international teams to move to the final league cum knock out stage (in accordance with laws of the game as framed by FIFA as adopted by AIFF & SSCB) to Delhi on August 5 when the matches kickstarted at three venues. Ambedkar Stadium, which was the venue for the inauguration ceremony was also the venue for semifinals and finals. Among the other two venues, one was Air Force School and the other was GD Goenka World School, Sohna Road, Gurugram.
GD Goenka World School played the host for 24 league matches over a week. With four matches daily (2 in the morning and 2 in the evening) held at the school campus, all girls’ teams in the pool games showcased immense skill, determination, and teamwork in display of the beautiful game of football. For most of them, the tournament had been a dream come true of playing nationals with an underlying spirit of competition and camaraderie.
According to Maj (retd) Karttikeya Sharma, administrators of the GD Goenka World School, the school has been now hosting Subroto Cup for three years now. “We provide infrastructure and logistic support and the matches are conducted by the (Subroto Mukerjee Sports Education) society. They had approached us and we readily agreed as we have nine fields and capacity to host tournament matches,” he adds.
The idea of getting the tournament to school was to give school’s own student exposure to such an important tournament. “As the teams are from age appropriate group same as our students, they can relate to them easily and it inspires and motivates them to get on the field themselves,” says Ms Sonali Sinha, the school principal. She further says that it is coming to notice of all educationists and sports experts that the culture of city soccer clubs is slowly becoming popular among students. “When you see an 11-year old girl from Jharkhand doing so well, you think how important tournaments like these are in a sportsman’s journey. So, the idea is to bring back the primacy of grassroots level sporting culture to schools, which have taken a hit,” she adds.
Agreeing with her, Maj Sharma feels the overexposure of internationalized sports has sidelined the fundamental sports grooming and playing in the country. With Smartphone and other forms of addiction assuming an epidemic proportion among the young, the vison of former chief of the Air Staff (Late) Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee saying football is needed to be encouraged at grass root level, becomes all the more important.
“Well provided (upper middleclass and rich) students take things for granted, so it is to help this generation by exposing and involving them in experiential learning by playing and creating an impact on their mind that are important and we at our school are making an effort to build a sports culture,” says Sinha while adding that our wish is to have our own team play this tournament in future sooner than later.
Meanwhile the excitement around Subroto Cup is still alive with matches for sub-junior U 15 still going on and U 17 Boys fixture coming soon. The junior girls U 17 championship for the edition has come to an end with the Jharkhand U-17 Junior Girls winning against Bangladesh in the finals on August 14.
