Hyderabad Sporting FC win City Qualifiers for 4th time

Hyderabad: Hyderabad Sporting FC edge past ITTI 1-0 to grab a place and represent Hyderabad in the national finals of the Red Bull Neymar Jr.'s Five, a globally established five-on-five football tournament, scheduled to be held in April.

The winning teams at the national finals will make it to the Red Bull Neymar Jr's Five 2019 World Finals in Brazil in July. It is the biggest 5-a-side football tournament in the country in-terms of locations and participants. The city qualifiers held in Hyderabad at HotFur, Begumpet Hyderabad on March 9 and 10 witnessed 126 teams giving their best

Hyderabad Sporting FC had lifted the Red Bull Neymar Jr's Five 2017 national champion trophy in a field of more than 2,000 teams from 12 cities and travelled to Brazil for the World Finals. Football has once again become very popular in Hyderabad because of the five-a-side format. This year's edition of Red Bull Neymar Jr's Five saw 192 team registrations.

Red Bull Neymar Jr's Five 2019 city qualifiers took place across the country from January 19 to March 10 in 15 cities including Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Goa, Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Guwahati, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi, Aizawl and Shillong.

The tournament is based on the belief that footballers never earn their skills in big stadiums at big clubs. Their journey almost always begins on the streets, with their friends, like it did for Neymar Jr. In the streets, their main obstacles are not the opposing defenders but the hard gravel, sweltering heat and the blinding dust. Most legends started out on a mere, obstacle-filled street, but turned the mere street into a path. A path to blinding success.

Just ask Pele, Alfredo Di Stefano or Neymar Jr. His journey started with a street and a dream and continues with a stadium and a fairy-tale. The signature football tournament saw more than 1, 25, 000 people taking part across 62 continents and 6 countries in the Red Bull Neymar Jr's Five 2018 World Finals last year, with the hope of making it all the way from the qualifiers to the World Final in July at the Instituto Projeto Neymar Jr in Praia Grande, Brazil and won by Mexico.