In what is turning out to be a Northeastern domination, Manipur's Nilamani English School and Meghalaya's Khrumdiengei Secondary School entered the quarterfinals by topping their respective groups E and G at the 55th Subroto Cup football tournament here today.
The Manipur outfit accounted for Namchi Sports Hostel from Sikkim with a 1-0 verdict, while the school from Shillong won their match 2-0 at the Ambedkar Stadium.
At NWC ground, Government Model High School (Chandigarh) beat Zahira College, Sri Lanka 7-0 in a group F match and Bangladesh Kidha Siksha Pratisthan downed Air Force Bal Bharti School in group H by a slender 1-0 margin to join the two northeastern teams in the quarterfinals. Incidentally, both the Chandigarh and Bangladesh schools topped their groups.
Thus BKSP remained the only foreign team to make it to the quarters with others already having packed their bags and left for their shores.
In Friday's first quarterfinal, Manipur will take on the Chandigarh squad and in the second, the showdown will be between Meghalaya and Bangladesh. Both the quarterfinals will be played at the Ambedkar Stadium.
Though the domination of the northeastern schools was evident, in today's match both teams managed to score very little. For the Manipur outfit the lone strike came from N Roshan in the first half of the match and for the Meghalaya team, which beat Loseling Lower Secondary School from Thimpu, Donboklang (5th minute) and Livingstone (25) netted the goals.
Even BKSP went through with a solitary goal scored by Mohammadd Jewel, their main strike force, in the 23rd minute.
But it was the Chandigarh boys who reaped maximum by striking seven goals to none against the Sri Lankan college. The goal-getters for the winners were Amarjit (22, 25, 51), S Sanjeev (27), Vikram (36, 38) and Balbir (37).
In other matches of the day at both venues teams went through their routines in different groups. Tomorrow, TAFS and Sikkim will clash since the match which was to be played on September 22, got postponed.
