New Delhi: A total of 32 teams, including India's top sides, will vie for supremacy in the 58th National Santosh Trophy Football Championship to be played at Manipur from October 17 to November 5.

While the teams have been divided into eight groups for the tournament to be played on round robin league bases, reigning champions Kerala, runners-up Goa, last year's semi-finalists Railways and Tamil Nadu have been given direct entry into quarter- final stage, All India Football Federation (AIFF) president Priyaranjan Dasmunshi told reporters on Tuesday.

Besides the prestigious trophy, there are also awards for player-of-the-match, valuable-player-of-the-tournament, top goal scorer, best goal-keeper and best fair play team trophy, all the awards being sponsored by LG Electronics which announced its alliance with AIFF on Tuesday.

Stating that Indian Football was undergoing a transition, Dasmunshi praised the efforts of the national soccer team in ending a 31 year title-drought by winning the LG cup in Vietnam.

He also took pride in under-17 team reaching the main phase of the Asian Championships recently and said, "The AIFF's commitment for the development of the sport has been doubted in many quarters of late. All of them will have to eat their words now."

Dasmunshi said the executive committee of the AIFF, which met this week, reviewed the performance of all categories of national team and identified the u-17 team as the nucleus of the future Indian team adding their training has been entrusted to the TATA Academy.

PTI