The 1953 Asian Quadrangular Football Tournament was the second edition of the
Asian Quadrangular Football Tournament
The Asian Quadrangular Football Tournament was an annual football tournament first held in Colombo, Ceylon. It was also alternatively known as Colombo Cup. Established in 1952 by the Ceylon Football Association as a part of the Colombo Fair, the na ...
held in
Rangoon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military governme ...
,
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
. India won the cup for a second time by winning all thee matches.
It was India's first outright win in an international football tournament played abroad. The team received the rolling Colombo Cup and a Special Burma Cup for permanent retention.
Overview
The India team arrived in
Rangoon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military governme ...
on 22 October 1953 and the Pakistan side, a week before. ''
The Indian Express
''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Limited, Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, ...
'' described the
Aung San Stadium
The Bogyoke Aung San Stadium () is a multi-purpose stadium
A multi-purpose stadium is a type of stadium designed to be easily used by multiple types of events. While any stadium could potentially host more than one type of sport or event, t ...
, where all matches were to be played, as having "concrete and semi permanent stands all around the ground" with a capacity of 30,000. The rules of the tournament had not made wearing boots mandatory.
Four of India's players —
Sailen Manna
Sailendra Nath Manna ( bn, শৈলেন মান্না; 1 September 1924 – 27 February 2012), known popularly as Sailen Manna, was an Indian football player who represented the India national team between 1948 and 1956. Predominantly p ...
,
Ahmed Khan,
Pansanttom Venkatesh
Pansanttom Venkatesh (1926 – 1 June 1977) was an Indian footballer. Venkatesh played for East Bengal and the India national football team during his professional career.
Club career
Venkatesh spent most of his club career in East Bengal, ...
and M. Thangaraj (in the second half) — played bare-footed against Pakistan in the tournament's first game, on 23 October.
Squads
Results
Matches
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Statistics
Goalscorers
References
{{reflist
Colombo Cup
1953 in Ceylon
1953 in Asian football