Group matches of Senior Women’s National Football Championship will be played in six states. Loktej Sports News

New Delhi, 10 November (Hindustan Reporter). The 28th Senior Women’s National Football Championship 2023-24 begins on Sunday. The group stage will see the 30 teams divided into six groups, with each group’s matches played in six different states. Three teams, defending champion Tamil Nadu, last season’s finalist Haryana and eventual host West Bengal, have got direct entry into the final round.

Group A, which will be played at the Mahamaya Sports Stadium in Ghaziabad from November 24 to December 3, features record 21-time champions Manipur along with Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and hosts Uttar Pradesh. DL Roy Memorial District Stadium in Krishnanagar, West Bengal 15 will host the four-team Group B from 12 to 19 November. Group B includes Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

The team of Kerala, which was the runner-up in 2005-06, is in Group C. Group C matches will be played from 23 November to 2 December at the Bengaluru Football Stadium in Bengaluru. Apart from Kerala, this group also includes host Karnataka, Tripura, Sikkim, Assam and Chandigarh. There are teams.

The GNDU Sports Complex in Amritsar, which hosted Group E of the Santosh Trophy in October, will also host Group D of the Senior Women’s NFC, comprising Jharkhand, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and hosts Punjab. Group matches will be played from 15 to 24 November. Odisha, the champion of the 37th National Games, will host Group E in Sundergarh from November 12 to 21 at the Sundergarh Stadium and Biju Patnaik Mini Stadium. Along with Odisha, the teams of Goa, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Gujarat are in Group E.

Railways, having lost to last season’s semi-finalists, are in Group F along with Maharashtra, Andaman and Nicobar, Bihar and hosts Himachal Pradesh. These matches will be played from 21 to 29 November at SAI Ground and NIT Ground in Hamirpur.

The six winners and three best runners-up of the group will qualify for the final round of the 28th Senior Women’s National Football Championship 2023–24 to be held in West Bengal in April 2024. The final round will be held in the same format as the previous season in two groups of six teams each, with the top two teams qualifying for the semi-finals.