The Indian campaign at the SAFF Women’s Championship 2024 football championship came to an end at the semifinal match played against Nepal on Sunday. The match being played at the Dasharath Stadium in Kathmandu, Nepal came down to penalty shootout and ended at 4-2 in Nepal’s favour.
It was an electrifying match, played at a packed stadium. For close to 70 minutes great game play was showcased by both teams. India’s Sangita Basfore (62’) opened the scorecard for the game scoring the first goal of the match. Next, it was Nepal’s all-rounder, Sabitra Bhandari, who scored the first goal for Nepal equalizing the score at 1-1 at full-time.
Nepal has now moved on to the finals of the tournament and will face off with Bangladesh, who won the other semi-final playing against Bhutan.
India has had a successful run at the SAFF Women’s Championship prior to 2023 and had won the title five consecutive years. But last year, Indian women faced defeat at the hands of Nepal in semi-final stage.
The first half saw no goals. In the 51st minute Nepal’s Rekha Poudel was given the second yellow card and thus the Nepalese team was reduced to 10 players.
At one point Nepal scored a goal to equalize the score. Although the referee had restarted the game, the Indian side was not yet in their positions when Nepal scored the goal which was eventually disallowed. The match was halted and was restarted only after an hour.
Indian failed to get their concentration back and allowed Nepal to score an equalizing goal whch prompted the match to move to penalty shootout.
