A twenty member team, coached by former Santosh Trophy player M Rajeev Kumar, will represent Kerala in the 64th National Football Championship for Santosh Trophy that will be held from May 6, 2011 at Assam.
The team will be led by Central Excise's Bijesh Ben and will have twelve fresh faces in it. The team was selected from a pool of 36 probables that included players that featured in the second division of the I-League. The team iwll be coached by M Rajeev Kumar whois a former Santosh Trophy goalkeeper and coach of Travancore Titanium. He will be assisted by Solly Xavier, caoch of Central Bank of India team.
For the first time in their history, the Kerala team will be backed by a sponsor. Cochin Shipyard has agreed to sponsor the team in the tournament.The team will travel to Bengaluru in train to a catch a flight to Assam from there on May 3.
Kerala will have their cluster matches played at Kinsukia in Assam. Kerala will open their campaign against Jammu and Kashmir on 6th May and then plays Chandigarh on the 8th May. Their final cluster match will be against Jharkhand on May 10.
35 teams will be participating in the championship this year. Last year's semifinalists - West Bengal, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Goa - have been given a bye into the Quarterfinal League stage, while the other teams will have to play the preliminary round cluster stage with only the top team from each cluster moving on to the next stage.
The quarter final round matches will take place from May 17 to 24. First semi-final will be held on May 26, while the second semi-final will be played on May 27 with grand finale being held on May 30.
Cluster I – Assam, Pondicherry, Rajasthan
Cluster II – Chattisgarh, Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh
Cluster III – Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Cluster IV – Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chandigarh Cluster V – Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Services, Arunachal Pradesh
Cluster VI – Delhi, Nagaland, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh
Cluster VII – Mizoram, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura
Cluster VIII – Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Railways, Sikkim
The team list will be added shortly.....
From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Wednesday 27 April 2011, restored from the site's 2012 database. Text as originally published.