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Chirag United’s Denson Devdas scored a brace to help West Bengal win their first Santosh Trophy title in 11 years.

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West Bengal came from behind to beat Punjab in the final of the Santosh Trophy. The two teams were pretty evenly matched and it was a fitting fixture as the final. The match started with Bengal dominating more of the possession in an effort to break down the Punjab defense early in the day. They played some attractive football in the opening minutes and strung together a few interesting moves, finding themselves in the Punjab half on a number of occasions. Robin Singh had a good start to the match as he sent Tarif Ahmed through on goal in the opening ten minutes but Harpreet Singh did just enough to get the ball off him in a desperate situation. The duo combined again in the 18th minute and on that occasion Ahmed headed into the vertical.

The side from north India struggled to get any control of the match as the duo of Denson Devdas and Jayanta Sen dictated terms in mid-field for most of the first half but a defensive lapse at the half hour mark involving Abhra Mondal and Rajiv Ghosh handed Punjab the initiative and they made no mistake. Balwant Singh gave Punjab the lead by netting from a Rahul Kumar crosses.

Punjab looked more buoyant after having scored the goal and came close to doubling their lead on a couple of occasions but Bengal’s defense stayed strong. It was Bengal who scored the next goal, equalizing in the dying seconds of the first period with Devdas scoring off a Snehashish Chakraborty.

The game lost it’s edge in the second period as both the sides were content with a more defensive approach and did not look to over-commit. It took Devdas to score an absolute screamer in the 78th minute to change things around as Bengal had completed their comeback to take a 2-1 lead. Punjab pushed hard towards the end but it was too little too late and Bengal claimed the Santosh Trophy.