Guwahati, Aug. 31: A team from Senegal will be one of the main attractions in the Guwahati Sports Association’s flagship event, the 58th Bharat Ratna Lokapriya Bordoloi Trophy football tournament, starting at Nehru Stadium here on Friday.
Announcing the participation of the foreign outfit, GSA general secretary Munin Nobis today said the team would be three time Senegal national champions Association Sportive Des Douanes (AC Douanes).
The team comprises five Senegal national players — Babcar Ndour, Karamba By Diallo, Ibrahima Faye, Ousmane Sarr and Baye Demba Mbengue.
The 15-member team will land here on September 13 and play its first match from the quarter-final stage on September 14. Prior to it, AC Douanes will be playing in the IFA Shield in Calcutta and after playing in the Bordoloi Trophy Tournament, they will participate in the Governor’s Gold Cup tournament in Sikkim.
“Since affording a team from Africa would cost us over Rs 60 lakh, it has been made easy by sharing the expenditure among three organising bodies now,” said Nobis. The GSA will have to bear a total cost of around Rs 12 lakh for the team.
The ONGC is sponsoring Rs 15 lakh in the Rs 30-lakh budget event while the GSA is yet to get any official commitment from the other prospective sponsors like Oil India Ltd, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd and others.
“We hope the foreign players will be a crowdpuller because Senegal is already a force to reckon with in the international football arena,” GSA president Pulak Goswami said. The team will be playing a maximum of three matches in the tournament.
Apart from the Senegal team, the other participants in the tournament will be Md Sporting (Calcutta), Mizoram XI (Mizoram), Assam Regim-ental Centre (Shillong), Army Green FC (Shillong), Nagala-nd Police (Dimapur), Langs-ning SC (Shillong), Oil India FC (Duliajan) and the local teams Assam State Electricity Board SC, Assam Police Blues, Food Corporation of India SC, Dynamo Club and GSA first-division league champions Gauhati Town Club.