Shetty to captain Maharashtra football team

Experienced midfielder Vijith Shetty was Friday appointed captain of the Maharashtra football team which will participate in the 35th National Games in Kerala from Feb 1-9.

Former India striker and Asian Football COnfederation (AFC) 'A' license holder Godfred Perira is the coach of the team while Sudhakar Rane is the manager.

Maharashtra qualified for the National Games by virtue of reaching the semi-finals of the 68th National Football Championship for the Santosh Trophy last year.

They are placed in Group A alongside hosts Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Goa. The top two teams from each group will qualify for the semi-finals.

Maharashtra will play their first match of the Games against Kerala (Feb 1), followed by Goa (Feb 3) and Tamil Nadu (Feb 5).

The team: Ubaid C.K., Chetan Dawdhariya, Sachin Gawas, Raviraj Kurne, Omkar Singh, Mohamed Irshad T.V., Nitesh Monde, Mohd. Shafique, Faisal T., Vijit Shetty (Captain), Siddarth Nayak, Akshay Kamble, Shahbaz Pathan, Shakti Singh Thakur, Vaibhav Shirley, Praveen Sharma, Karan Atwal, Jay Kumar Patil, Sandesh Gadkari and Abhishek Ambekar.