The 1986–87 Santosh Trophy was the 43rd edition of the

Santosh Trophy The National Football Championship for Santosh Trophy, or simply Santosh Trophy, is an inter-state national football competition contested by the state associations and government institutions under the All India Football Federation (AIFF), th ...

, the main

State State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

competition for

football in India Association football is one of the most popular sports in India. The 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup was the first FIFA event the country hosted. It was called the most successful FIFA U-17 World Cup ever, with a record-breaking attendance of 1,347,133 ...

. It was held in

Tamluk Tamluk (), is a town and a municipality in the Indian States and territories of India, state of West Bengal. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities of the world and the headquarter ...

, and

Rabindra Sarobar Stadium The Rabindra Sarobar Stadium is a multi-use stadium in Lake Gardens, Kolkata, India. It is used for football (soccer), football matches and serves as the home of many Calcutta Football League matches. History The venue opened in 1961. It also ...

and

Mohun Bagan Ground Mohun Bagan Ground, also known as Mohun Bagan–Calcutta FC Ground, is a football stadium located in Maidan, Kolkata, just opposite Eden Gardens. Due to certain restrictions by the Indian Armed Forces, who own all the land surrounding Fort W ...

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

Bengal Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...

defeated

Railways Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to roa ...

2–0 in the final to win the competition for the 22nd time.

Quarter-final League

Bihar, Services, Railways and Haryana qualified from Cluster one to four. The eight teams that finished in the top two positions in each group in the quarter-final league in 1985–86 were seeded directly to the quarter-final.

Group One

Group Two

Karnataka goal-keeper Basheer saved a penalty from Brooks in the 57th minute.

Group Three

Group Four

Bengal captain

Biswajit Bhattacharya Biswajit Bhattacharya is a retired Indian professional footballer and football manager. He most recently managed Calcutta Football League club Calcutta Customs and is the current head coach of West Bengal football team. Playing career East B ...

was replaced by

Sisir Ghosh Sisir Ghosh is a former Indian professional footballer who played as a striker for local Kolkata clubs Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. He also represented the India national team. International career Ghosh made his competitive debut for the I ...

in the 30th minute of the first half. He played no further part in the tournament. Maharashtra led 7–1 in the first half, four goals scored by Jaswant Singh. Prasanta Banerjee's goal went through the net and was awarded by the referee after consultation with the linesman B. S. Bisht. Maharashtra refused to play and there was a delay of seven minutes.

Semifinal

After the match ended at 1–1 after 90 minutes, the crowd threw stones at the Kerala players. Thomas Sebastian was hit by a stone and needed medical attention. Debashis Roy's header appeared to have been saved on the goal line but was given as a goal.

Final

Railways were coached by

P. K. Banerjee Pradip Kumar Banerjee (23 June 1936 – 20 March 2020) was an Indian professional association football, footballer who played as a forward (association football), striker for the India national football team. He also captained the nationa ...

. Bengal's coach was Arun Sinha and manager

Subhash Bhowmick Subhash Bhowmick (2 October 1950 – 22 January 2022) was an Indian football player and manager. During his playing career, he represented the "Big Two" of Kolkata football, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. He also represented India in various int ...

Review

The tournament was widely criticised for the lack of quality. Jarnail Singh who gave away the prizes said that he had never seen such a poor nationals. "I didn't see a single team playing methodical and organised football .. I'm really pained to see such a fall in the standard of Indian football".

Sailen Manna Sailendra Nath Manna (; 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 played as a left-back, Manna is consider ...

, a former captain of Indian football team, said it was one of the worst nationals that he had ever seen. It didn't help that Punjab and Goa, two of the strongest team, could not make it to the semifinal. The refeering was also of low quality. In the Bengal-Kerala semifinal, the referee Badal Chakrabarty and a linesman P.K. Basu were Bengalis. India had seven referees in the international panel. None of them were used in the tournament because of the possibility that they would be required for the pre-Olympic matches. Eventually, they stood in neither set of matches.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1986-87 Santosh Trophy Santosh Trophy seasons