Inside the first 12 minutes of their final AFC Women’s Asian Cup group-stage match against Chinese Taipei, India’s Soumya Guguloth hit the left post with a header from a corner and then missed the far post by inches, both chances provided by Manisha Kalyan. Pyari Xaxa later got a shot in at around the 10th minute.
. They needed to win by a two-goal margin to go through to the quarterfinals of this tournament, and keep alive their hopes of qualifying for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Loose passes and heavy touches crept up but they were running the Chinese Taipei defence ragged in the opening exchanges.
All that pressure was let off in the 12th minute when Chen Jin-wen latched on to the ball after Sanju Yadav pretty much passed it into empty space inside her own penalty box, squared it to Su Yu-hsuan who promptly put it past India goalkeeper Panthoi Chanu to give Chinese Taipei the lead. India suddenly needed to score three goals to make it to the quarterfinals.
A strike so pure, it needed VAR to confirm 🙆♀️
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Some had questioned why head coach Amelia Valverde selected Sanju in the squad considering she didn’t have the greatest of seasons in the Indian Women’s League (IWL) playing for Sribhumi this year. On Tuesday, Sanju didn’t really recover from that error for the rest of the game while Martina Thokchom, a midfielder, played as a make-shift centre-back. Chinese Taipei concentrated their attacks through the left, often easily putting the ball between Sanju and Martina and creating chances. Loose touches from players all over the pitch, except from Manisha, hurt the Indian cause too.
But they equalised thanks to a thunderbolt of a free kick from Manisha in the 39th minute which clattered against the underside of the crossbar, bounced inside the goal and then came out.
Panthoi was called into action just before half-time with Chen Yu-Chin controlling a long ball with a backheel and driving at goal. The Indian goalkeeper rushed forward and took the full force of Chen’s strike on her face. A lengthy break ensued in which Panthoi had a concussion test before she was declared fit to carry on.
A minute later, she had to face a penalty.
She went the right way but the ball hit the post, ricocheted off the back of her head and rolled into the goal, thus ending as an own goal for Panthoi. The penalty itself had been awarded due to a completely involuntary handball by Pyari as India went into half-time trailing 1-2.
The second half began just as the first did, with India getting on the front foot. Manisha seemed to have been given a free rein by head coach Valverde and was revelling in the role, with Chinese Taipei looking devoid of ideas when it came to dealing with her.
But they kept exploiting the space on the left side of the Indian defence. India had a let-off in the 62nd minute when another mistake from Sanju led to Su passing the ball into the back of the net, but she was offside by over a metre.
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The relentless Chinese Taipei pressure finally bore fruit in the 77th minute when Chen, standing all alone in the big space between Sanju and India captain Sweety Devi, received the ball from Wu Kai-Ching and put it past the charging Panthoi. In the process, Sweety’s leg clattered sickeningly into Panthoi’s head and both players had to be stretchered off. The score was 3-1 and that is how it ended, despite Manisha almost single-handedly creating a few more chances in the dying minutes.
The 20-year-old Sanfida Nongrum, playing her second match for India and first in the starting eleven, told the host broadcaster sheepishly after the match that she had “never seen football like this before,” when asked about her experience in the tournament.
What she and the Indian players are used to are uneven fields to play on back home, often during the afternoon under a blazing sun. In spite of this, the Indian players gave a good account of themselves in this match and the one against Vietnam, both teams ranked several rungs higher than then in the FIFA standings. One can only wonder how far they could’ve gone had “football like this” been a norm for the likes of Sanfida.
