Hosts Bengal will aim at ending their 11-year title drought when the 64th National Football Championship for the Santosh Trophy 2009-10 kicks off with the preliminary round at different veunes in Kolkata on Thursday.
Twenty-nine times champions Bengal, under coach Raghu Nandy, bowed to Goa in the shootout last year in Chennai to finsh runners-up and the title chase remained elusive for the giants who had last won the trophy way back in 1998-99.
This time under Shabbir Ali, Bengal vow to win back the title as the team gears up for a residential camp from Saturday before they kick off their campaign in the quarterfinal league stage beginning 29th July.
Bengal along with reigning champions Goa and semifinalists Tamil Nadu and Services have been directly seeded into the last eight stage.
Thirty-two teams will participate in the Santosh Trophy with 28 unseeded teams divided into eight clusters where they will play round-robin league in each cluster beginning Thursday.
This time, the premier tournament will lose a bit of sheen with 30 national team players training in Portugal for the Asian Cup to be held in Doha, Qatar from January 7-29 next year.
In the opening day's fixtures, Karnataka will take on Meghalaya at Khardah in cluster one, while in cluster two, Maharashtra will fight Chandigarh (Howrah Stadium) and Tripura will lock horns with Andhra Pradesh (Barasat) to kick off the tournament.
The winners of each cluster will then battle it out in the knock-out pre-quarterfinal stage for a place in the quarterfinal league.
From quarterfinal league onwards, the tournament will be held on the artificial turf of the Yuba Bharati Krirangan in Salt Lake.
The quarterfinal league will be held from 29th July to 4th August while the semi-finals will be played on 6th August.
Veteran coach Shabbir Ali said, "We have to win at any cost, there is nothing else in mind. We are not looking back."
Bengal boast of veterans like Jayanta Sen, Abhijit Mondal, Sandip Nandy ans Gouranga Datta.
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