The Subroto Cup International Football Tournament is a prestigious international inter-school football tournament that is held in New Delhi, India. The tournament held annually since 1960, is named after the Indian Air Force Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee. It is the oldest national school football tournament in India and was instituted to promote and encourage the sport at the grassroots level in the country. Students from different countries across Asia participate in this tournament, making it one of the more noteworthy school-level football competitions.

History

Subroto Mukerjee conceived the idea in 1958 when he was the Chief of the Air Staff. Subroto Mukerjee Sports Education Society was formed in 1960

Organisation

The Subroto Cup is conducted by the Indian Air Force, with the help of Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports.

Tournament structure

The current tournament structure consists of the preliminary inter-school tournaments at different divisional levels culminating in the inter-school finals at the state level. The winners then participate in the main national tournament.

Venues

The venues for the tournament held at New Delhi:

International Participation

School teams from numerous countries have played in the tournament, with the first team reaching the final in 1993 being the Special Sports School from Uzbekistan. Since then many schools from foreign countries take part regularly, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Nepal, Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan etc. In the 2015 Championship, for the first time teams of boys and girls came from Afghanistan for the tournament. Brazilian legend and football's elder statesman Pele came to India after a gap of 38 years to attend the final of the 56th edition of the Subroto Cup as the chief guest. In 2016, Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos were the chief guests at the 57th edition.

Results

Junior (U–17)

The following is the list of winners and runners-up:

Sub–Junior (U–15)

At the request of the School Games Federation of India, the Subroto Cup organisers started a sub-junior (11-14 Years) football tournament from 1998. Sixteens teams participated in the inaugural tournament, while more schools took part in the following years. Since 2000, the fairplay trophy for the sub-junior group has been named in the memory of late Lieutenant Sandeep Loomba, who died in a mountaineering expedition at Abi Gamin peak. Fairplay trophy for the junior group, medals and certificates for both the age groups, are provided by the Subroto Society

Girls Junior (U–17)