Di­recTV, to­geth­er with Japs Fried Chick­en and North East Stars has launched an eight-team $25,000 in­vi­ta­tion­al am­a­teur foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion which will fea­ture many of the North East re­gion­al cham­pi­ons com­pet­ing.The tour­na­ment ti­tled the Di­recTV North East Stars Cham­pi­on of Cham­pi­ons In­vi­ta­tion­al Foot­ball Tour­na­ment kicked off last night with a dou­ble-head­er at the Man­zanil­la Recre­ation Grounds.

The teams have been di­vid­ed in­to two groups of four af­ter which the top two will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals on De­cem­ber 27 fol­lowed by the fi­nal on Jan­u­ary 1, 2011 New Years Day. Group A con­sists of Quash Trace Ball Play­ers, Ma­yaro Spurs, G.Madrid & Va­len­cia Li­ons Youth FC. while Group B teams are Matu­ra Utd, Ex­press FC, Slap­pers & Set­tle­ment Utd. Dou­ble head­er match­es are al­so sched­uled for to­day, to­mor­row and De­cem­ber 16, 17 and 21.