Defending champion Karnataka will lead the challenge in the final round of the 77th National football championship for the Santosh Trophy, which gets underway at the Golden Jubilee Stadium near Arunachal Pradesh’s capital Itanagar on Wednesday.
A total of 12 teams (nine qualifiers from the group stage and three automatic qualifiers — host Arunachal Pradesh and last year’s finalists Karnataka and Meghalaya) have been divided into two groups of six each in the final round.
This time the knock-out phase has been enhanced with the addition of the quarterfinals, which will have the top four teams from each group contesting. The players will be chiefly sourced from I-League 2, which has taken a break to allow the players to represent their states.
