Kerala’s MSP Higher Secondary School, Malappuram went down fighting to the junior side of the European giants FC Dynamo Kyiv 5-2 in the finals of the Subroto Cup International Football Tournament at the Ambedkar Stadium, New Delhi. Dmytro Zayikin’s four goals plus one from Rostyslav Taranukha undid the Kerala boys for whom Muhammed Sabith netted a brace.
Against a team that boasted of three junior Ukrain national team players and the set up through which superstars like Andriy Shevchenko were born, the Kerala’s own boys put up a brave display scoring twice against the Ukrainians.
This was the first time a Kerala team had progressed to the final of the national school football tournament.
Within 13 minutes of play, Ukrainian side who were strong favourites for the final had taken a 2-0 lead through Zayikin. The Kerala boys reduced the deficit by one goal when Muhammed Sabith scored from a counter attack. Taranukha and Zayikin were again on goals to make the score 4-1 at half time.
Zayikin made it 5-1 at resumption with a left footer before Sabith again scored for MSP HSS to make the full time score 5-2. Sabith finished the tournament with a tally of five goals. The difference between the sides could have been wider if it had not been for Kerala’s goalkeeper Vishnu VK who managed to block several of Dynamo’s efforts on goal.
Dynamo Kyiv were worthy winners, but MSP became the only side to have scored against them in the whole tournament. Dynamo’s youngsters scored 34 goals from 7 matches throughout the tournament.
Kerala school team’s coach Benoy C James was full praise for his boys. “The way our boys attacked and secured the first goal that definitely had raised our confidence and the crowd support gave us all the more support. It is the first time that Kerala had qualified for the finals in the history of Subroto Cup and we are happy with the performance of the boys,” he commented after the match. Benoy was assisted by A Santosh and U Suhaib for the tournament.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshall NAK Browne underlined the growing popularity of the tournament saying many European clubs, including FC Barcelona, are keen to send their teams. “Keeping the interest alive we will do a club tournament for the foreign teams along side this tournament,” he added.
The organisers also selected 25 players including Kerala’s Arjun Jayaraj from the tournament who were given a one-time scholarship of Rs 25000 each. Meanwhile, tournament sponsor Adidas also announced its initiative to adopt 10 talented players after the tournament as part of their ‘Generation Adidas Program’.
Champions Dynamo Kyiv were awarded the Subroto Cup along with Rs. 3 lakhs in cash. Runners-up were rewarded Rs. 1.5 lakhs. All the members and officials of both the teams were given mobile phones by the tournament’s principal sponsors Samsung Electronics.
Final Score:
FC Dynamo Kyiv, Ukraine 5-2 MSP Higher Secondary School
Goals: Dmytro Zayikin (10′, 13′, 29′, 41′), Rostyslav Taranukha (25′) – Muhammed Sabith (15′, 54′)
From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Tuesday 2 October 2012. The database copy of this article was lost; it was recovered in 2026 from the Internet Archive's saved copy of the live page.