Watch out for the country’s grand finale of the five-a-side football tournament on 27th April in Hyderabad India, April 25, 2018: Neymar Jr.’s Five, a globally established five-on-five football tournament, organized by energy drink giant Red Bull has reached its last leg – the country finals to be held on Friday, April 27 at Hotfut, Hyderabad. This year, the tournament qualifiers are taking place across 62 counties and 6 continents and featuring more than 1,00,000 players; making it the biggest 5-a-side football tournament in-terms of locations & participants.
Among those 62 countries are India, which witnessed teams from 14 cities participating. Neymar Jr’s Five 2018 city qualifiers took place across 14 cities in the country including Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Goa, Delhi, Aizawl, Chandigarh, Guwahati, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi and Shillong. While this tournament has been taking place for three years now, there was a massive spike to the number of participating teams this year in the country being an impressive 2680 as compared to the 2420 teams, which participated last year. The National Champion will represent India in the World Finals 2018 at Instituto Projeto Neymar, Brazil, on July 21st, 2018 and meet the Barcelona superstar in his own backyard.
Neymar Jr’s Five gives football lovers across India a chance to use their street skills to carve their path to glory, and a chance to represent the country in Brazil. The tournament organised by Red Bull has a unique, fast-paced format. Neymar Jr’s Five sees two teams of five players, sans a goalkeeper, have 10 minutes to strut their stuff and win a chance to impress Neymar Jr. The twist in this thrilling affair is that for each goal scored by a team, a member of the opposition will have to leave the field. The team with the maximum players take the spoils. The winner is the team with most players on the field (goals) after 10 minutes or if all players are eliminated. If both teams score equal number of goals, or if no goals are scored, the match is drawn. Each team must have participants of the age 16-25 and 2 players can be older than 25 years.
Hyderabad Sporting FC had lifted the Neymar Jr’s Five 2017 national champion trophy in a field of more than 2000 teams from 12 cities and travelled to Brazil for the World Finals. Zubair Sultan from Hyderabad Sporting FC said, “Football has once again become very, very popular in Hyderabad because of the five-a-side format. When we used to play 11-a-side tournaments five years ago, there would be just 50 players in the whole tournament. Now, with five-a-side football becoming popular and there being so many tournaments, there are hundreds of players between 16 and 20 years old playing regularly. For example, look at the Neymar Jr’s Five tournament organized by Red Bull which does not have any entry fee and very good prizes, there is amazing participation. This year, there were more than 260 teams in Hyderabad registering for the tournament. You can see exactly how many young players are taking interest in these tournaments by the participation. What happened is that because we won the Neymar Jr’s National final last year and went to Brazil, everyone in Hyderabad knows us socially and how we play. So now everyone in Hyderabad is encouraged to play, so there were more Hyderabadi teams in the tournament. I play as an attacking midfielder. Our strategy is to keep the ball moving and not allow the opposition to touch the ball; we win matches that way. We look forward to win the national finals this year too.”
Details of the final 14 teams below:
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Cities
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Team Qualified from City Qualifiers
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Ahmedabad
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Quarterbacks
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Bangalore
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Joga Bonito
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Chandigarh
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Minerva FC
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Chennai
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Super 5’s FC
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Delhi
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Imperial FC
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Goa
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SFX Bhatpal Canacona
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Guwahati
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Jobiet FC
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Hyderabad
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Hyderabad Sporting FC
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Kochi
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Black & White FC
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Kolkata
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Neymar Jr’s
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Mumbai
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Joga bonito
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Aizawl
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Miggas FC
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Pune
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Kalina Rangers
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Shillong
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S.A.C. United
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Fixtures for the National Finals:
Groups of teams will compete against each other in the league format leading to quarter finals, semis and final match
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