Shillong, Feb 1: There was bad news to start the month with as Meghalaya were knocked out of contention for a place in the quarterfinals of the National Football Championship for the Santosh Trophy 2025-26 after Services defeated Kerala 1-0 in the last Group B match in Silapathar, Assam, this morning.
Victory (their first) for Services means that they took fourth place away from Meghalaya in the standings; only the top four from each group will progress to the knockout rounds. Both Services and Meghalaya finished with 6 points after one win, three draws and one defeat each. However, Services have a better goal difference (0 to -2) and that was what saw them through to the quarters.
Services had a terrible final round campaign before today and if circumstances had been different they would have probably lost to Kerala as well. However, last year’s runners-up had already secured qualification for the final round before this match and had even guaranteed themselves first place and that allowed coach Shafeeq Hassan Madathil to make a whopping seven changes to the starting lineup and give key first team players a rest.
This worked in Services’ favour and they scored in the 18th minute through Abhishek Pawar, which was enough to give them the 3 points required.Not progressing to the knockouts will be disappointing for Meghalaya as players and officials were in a positive mood. Coach Khlain Pyrkhat Syiemlieh had led the state team to the runners-up spot – their best finish – in the Santosh Trophy 2022-23 and was back again at the helm with a very talented squad of players.
However, Meghalaya only just managed to progress from the preliminaries in Shillong in December but this was largely because the team had precious little time to train together. They practised more extensively before heading off to Assam and were confident even though they were in a ‘Group of Death’ with four ex-champions – Kerala, Services, Railways and Punjab – and Odisha.
Meghalaya started the final round with a 1-0 win against Odisha followed by two high-scoring draws – 3-3 against Punjab and 2-2 versus Services. Meghalaya held the lead on three separate occasions in the Punjab match but could not keep the advantage. It was a different tale three days later against Services as they were two goals down before clawing their way back to take a point. Next followed a bruising 3-0 defeat to Kerala before a 2-2 draw with Railways yesterday.
The scale of the defeat at the hands of Kerala, the three draws and small margin of victory over Odisha were very consequential. A small change in any one of these and Meghalaya would have made it to the quarterfinals.
Even if that had been the case, though, there were obvious shortcomings. Meghalaya scored eight goals in five games but conceded 10, which is more than even bottom side Odisha. While the team gave Meghalaya’s passionate football fans plenty to be excited about, there is much work to do before the state can really challenge the best in the country for the prestigious Santosh Trophy.
