Imphal, Sept. 25: Five Manipuri footballers in the Salgaocar Sports Club of Goa have responded positively to the All-Manipur Football Association’s invitation to play for the state team in the Santosh Trophy.
Footballers Samson, Tomba, Bungo, Dharamjit and L. Manitomba of the Goan club, who have agreed to play for the state, are expected to reach Imphal a couple of days before the start of the championship, to be hosted in the Manipur capital from October 17 to November 5.
Tomba and Manitomba were in the national team that won the recent six-nation LG Cup in Vietnam. The AMFA has invited the star players for ensuring Manipur’s progress to the final in this edition of the prestigious 58-year-old football showpiece.
The state team is undergoing strenuous training, which has entered its last leg with the conclusion of the second phase of coaching for the probables.
In the first phase, 37 probables had been called up. The number has been cut down to 23 for the third and final trials.
For chief coach Ch. Shantikumar, it is a do-or-die mission. Faced with high expectations at home, the coach is under tremendous pressure.
He has even announced that he would retire if his team failed to reach the final stage of the tournament.
Expectations are very high since it has become mandatory, for the first time, for footballers playing away from their native place to join their state squads if called for duty. Manipur, which has more than a dozen ace players in the top teams of the country, is in a quandary over selecting the stars.
However, the performance of these players will depend on the amount of time they could put up for training with the other players in the squad before the start of the tournament.
Unfortunately, they would have only a few days of rehearsal time to put things together.
Twenty of the 32 teams, including Assam, have confirmed participation in the tournament.
The other teams are Karnataka, Delhi, Goa, Rajasthan, Pondicherry, Bihar, Orissa, Nagaland, Punjab, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Daman and Diu, Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh.
