SAFF Under-18 Women’s Championship: India wins it’s first title with a better goal difference

India’s Under-18 women’s football team emerged champions of the SAFF Under-18 Women’s Championship 2022 at the JRD Tata Sports Complex in Jamshedpur on Friday. This was the first time India won the tournament, after finishing runner-up to Bangladesh at the last edition in 2021 (which was played in the Under-19 format).

India emerged as champions this time around, in the third edition of the tournament, on goal difference, +11 in comparison to +3 from Bangladesh.

The most valuable player of the tournament and the highest goal scorer was Lynda Kom who scored 5 goals in total.

In the last match of the championship, Bangladesh scraped past India by a solitary goal. India, however, had seized the initiative early as in the 5th minute, Shubhangi managed to find some space in the opposition box and went for a shot which went directly to Bangladesh custodian Rupna.

India were unlucky to be denied by the post in the 40th minute when Nitu, all in the clear, placed it past Rupna only to see the ball bouncing off the post, and straight into Rupna’s hands – as both teams headed to the interval locked goalless.

Changing over, Head Coach Thomas Dennerby brought in Poonam in place of Shubhangi in the 46th minute.

In the 60th minute, the captain Shilky Devi went for a shot from a long range but an agile Rupna was not to be beaten. Couple of substitutions followed as Martina and Sunita were replaced by Naketa, and Amisha respectively.

With time running out for Bangladesh, they went all out in the attack, and Aklima Khatun put them into the lead in the 74th minute with a shot from outside the box to score the only goal of the match in a 1-0 win.

The event in Jamshedpur had just three teams partiticipating this time, the hosts along with Nepal and two-time defending champions Bangladesh. As a result, organisers decided to place all three in a group and hold the tournament in a round-robin format with each team playing the other twice.

India and Bangladesh both finished their four matches with nine points - three wins and one loss coming against each other.

Eventually it was the better tally of scoring 13 goals and conceding two (+11 on goal difference) that earned India top spot against Bangladesh’s tally of +3 (scoring seven and conceding four goals).