State Bank of India Kerala Football Club, also known as SBI Kerala FC (formerly known as SBT Thiruvananthapuram), was a football club based in

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

. It last competed in the

Kerala Premier League Kerala Premier League is a state-level top football league organized by the Kerala Football Association and played in the state of Kerala, India. For sponsorship reasons it is officially known as the Scoreline Kerala Premier League. Structur ...

, the top tier league of the state.

History

During the mid-1980s, already established as a premier bank in the state of Kerala and the considering the popularity and passion towards the game of football at the region, State Bank of Travancore decided to launch a team of its own and register it with Kerala Football Association in November 1986. The debut of the team was in 1987 in the Trivandrum District 'E' Division League, the 5th division league of the region. The team steadily progressed further and went on to reach the 'B' Division to win the trophy in 1992, thus entering the 'A' Division League, the Tier-1 league of the region in 1993–94.

Growth

At that point, the bank stepped in again by recruiting sportsmen under a special sports quota, pioneering a new trend among the government-controlled Public Sector Undertakings. This received a further impetus when

N. M. Najeeb N is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet. N or n may also refer to: Mathematics * \mathbb, the set of natural numbers * N, the field norm * N for ''nullae'', a rare Roman numeral for zero * n, the size of a statistical sample Sc ...

, a prominent national player at that time, agreed to coach the team. The club then evolved from a group of amateur players and went on to win various trophies. It also qualified and participated in many national level tournaments like

Durand Cup The Durand Football Tournament, commonly known as Durand Cup, is an annual domestic football competition in India which was first held in 1888 in Shimla. Hosted by the Durand Football Tournament Society (DFTS) and All India Football Federation ...

IFA Shield The IFA Shield is an annual football competition organized by the Indian Football Association. The IFA is the governing body of football in the state of West Bengal, came into existence in 1893. Named after the association, the IFA Shield to ...

, Rover's Cup, Scissors Cup, Kalinga Cup and the Federation Cup.

Entry to National Football League

Being the state champions in the 1996, SBT was eligible to play in the newly formed

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

introduced by the All India Football Federation that year, but the emergence of the first professional football club from the state FC Cochin denied its opportunity. However, SBT was given an entry to the 2nd Division NFL, introduced in 1997–98 as a qualifying round for the top division. The team, though a hot favorite with the likes of National players Jiju Jacob, V. P. Shaji, Feroz Sheriff, A. Sunil Kumar and K. V. Dhanesh, could not qualify as it ended runner-up with a draw against Sesa Sports Club in the final game of the season. The next season (1998–99) was the highpoint in SBT's history as it emerged the champions in the 2nd Division NFL, being the only institutional team till date to win the same. It also got promoted to the National Football League, but the glory did not last long as the team performed poorly and again got relegated to the second division. It once again qualified for the

in 2004–05 but after that, there were hardly any notable achievement for the club at the national level.

Last developments

Pursuant to the directions of AIFF, SBT formed a junior team. It entered the 'E' Division of Trivandrum District League in 2007 and in less than a decade, it has reached the super division, winning all the lower division leagues and was clubbed with SBT's senior team, giving SBT the distinction of fielding two teams in the Super Division, a first in the history of Trivandrum League. The future of the club was in threat after the merger between the State Bank of India with State Bank of Travancore in April 2017. But the new management decided to continue with the football team and the club took part in

2016-17 Kerala Premier League 16-17 is a band from Basel, Switzerland. Their music combines punk rock, hardcore punk, jazz and industrial music. Biography 16-17 was founded in 1983 by Alex Buess, Knut Remond and Markus Kneubühler. When the group played its first con ...

with a new name SBI Kerala.

Honours

* National Football League II **Champions (2): 1998–99, 2004 * Kerala Football League **Champions (4): 2000–01, 2003–04, 2006–07, 2008 **Runners-up (3): 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2005–06 *

**Champions (2): 2014–15, 2015–16 **Runners-up (1): 2013–14 *Kerala State Club Football Championship **Champions (6): 1996, 2002, 2008, 2013, 2015, 2017 **Runners-up (3): 1997,2006,2011 *G.V. Raja Football Tournament **Runner-up (1): 2010 * Mammen Mappillai Trophy – 1996 * Arlem Cup * Kerala Kaumudi Trophy * JC Jacob Trophy * Meyers Cup :Champions : 2019

References