India Durand Cup

The Durand Football Tournament, known as Durand Cup, was started by Sir Henry Mortimer Durand in Shimla in 1888. Sir Henry was recuperating from illness in Shimla in North India. Having become conscious of the value of sport as a means to maintain health, he decided to present a prize to encourage sporting competition in India. In 1940, the venue of the tournament was shifted to New Delhi.

The Durand tournament was initially a military affair, open to the British Armed Forces, the Indian Army and other armed units such as provincial frontier-security regiments and the volunteer regiments of the reserves. In practice, however, the native soldiers traditionally preferred field hockey to football, a fact which has been evident from the Indian and Pakistani dominance of that sport in international events such as the Olympics. The exception to this tradition were the Nepali men of the brigades of Gurkhas. Initially, this tended to leave the field open to the Indian Army until football's popularity took hold and it became the more universal sport it is today.^[]

The matches were played in Dagshai, near Shimla, with the inaugural final becoming a Scottish affair, where the first name on the trophy been inscribed was the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who beat the Highland Light Infantry by 2–1. In 1940 the tournament was relocated to the capital city of New Delhi and, with most military units dispatched in World War II, the tournament was opened to civilian teams so as to maintain the level of competition, wherein Mohammedan became the first civilian team to win the tournament at the Irwin Amphitheater. The tournament would get suspended due to the war, which would soon be followed by the Indian independence movement leading to the partition of India.

Following the turmoil of in 1947, the Durand Cup was accidentally discovered in the office of Commander-in-Chief Sir Claude Auchinleck and efforts were made in order to shift the tournament to the newly formed Pakistan, but was strongly resisted by the Defence Secretary H.M. Patel, who acquired and stored it in the State Bank of India, ensuring that the Durand Cup remains a part of Indian football. Since then the tournament is hosted by the Durand Football Tournament Society, a registered society at Delhi, presided by the Chief of Defence Staff and chaired by the three Service Chiefs of Indian Armed Forces. At the first edition of the tournament since the independence of India, Hyderabad City Police defeated Mohun Bagan by 1–0 in the replayed final. For the next ten years, the trophy would go on to swap hands frequently among East Bengal FC, Mohun Bagan, Madras Regimental Centre and Hyderabad City Police, who played as Andhra Pradesh Police after 1960. After a year of halt due to Sino-Indian War, the tournament would get dominated by Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, with Border Security Force and JCT FC challenging their dominant run at times. In 1997, FC Kochin became the first South Indian club to get their hands on the Durand Cup.

Mahindra United FC won the first title of the 3rd millennium and their second time, following its 1998 win. In 2006, Osian's became the first civilian organisation to co-host the Durand Cup on a 5-year deal with DFTS until 2010, in order to develop the tournament and revive the interest in the game. In the following years however, clubs from Goa produced a run of winning form with clubs like Salgaocar FC, Sporting Clube de Goa, Dempo SC and Churchill Brothers FC Goa. Churchill Brothers FC Goa won the tournament thrice in 2007, 2009 and 2011, and narrowly missed a hat-trick, as runners-up in 2008. Since 2000, only twice the tournament was won by the Indian Armed Force teams – Army XI in 2005 and Army Green in 2016. In 2013, Mohammedan SC would win the tournament for the second time after 73 years and for the first time since the independence of India. Due to lack of adequate response in New Delhi, the following year Durand Cup was relocated to Goa, under the instructions of Minister of Defence Manohar Parrikar. The significance of the tournament had dissipated with time but the Indian Armed Forces kept the Durand Tournament tradition alive for decades. The tournament had been scrapped-off from the Indian football calendar a number of times without any significant reason, for instance in the years 2015, 2017 and 2018.

In 2019, the tournament was jointly organised by the Armed Forces and the Government of West Bengal, thus relocated to West Bengal in favour for higher attendance figures. In that edition, Gokulam Kerala FC became the second football club from Kerala to win the tournament. In 2020, the tournament was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the Armed Forces decided to host the tournament in West Bengal, jointly with the Government of West Bengal, till 2025. As the significance of the tournament depraved, usually the participating Indian Super League (ISL) clubs would field their respective reserve squads, in order to focus on the more important league games. However, at 130th edition of the tournament, organisers took an effort to revive the legacy and most clubs decided to field full-strength squads. FC Goa became fourth Goan club to win the tournament by defeating Mohammedan SC. The following year, AIFF decided to make Durand Cup a mandatory tournament for all ISL clubs to participate since a club must play at least 27 domestic games to be eligible for AFC competitions, therefore AFC for the first time recognised Durand Cup as one of the cup tournaments of India. Hence, in the 131st edition, for the first time, all the clubs of ISL participated in the tournament along with five invited clubs from I-League and the usual four armed force teams. Due to expansion of the competition, the matches were hosted at more than one venue, alongside Kolkata, which was unprecedented till then.