ANTHONY MARY A.
The India women’s national football Federation and represents India in Women’s International football competitions. The Women’s team resumed playing on 7 Sep 2012 after nearly a year-long hiatus. Under the global jurisdiction of FIFA and governed in Asia by the AFC, the team is also part of the South Asian Football Federation. The team was one of the best teams in Asia in the mid 70s to early 80s ,when they became runners-up at 1979 and 1983 AFC women’s Asian Cup. Presently The Indian team has won all the SAFF Women’s Championship that they have participated in since 2010.
After 2009 sanction by FIFA, the AIFF started to put their minds in place to better the condition of the national team and women’s football, which led to commencing SAFF Women’s Championship and also including women’s football in the South Asian Games. Indian team earn massive success in SAFF competitions. Winning the SAFF Women’s Championship four times in row without losing a single game. Additionally they won two gold medals at South Asian Games.
On 17 December 2014, AIFF Secretary Kushal Das stated that the goal for women’s football from 2014 to 2017 was to increase the ranking of the India senior team to the top 40s and the top 8 in Asia, start a professional women’s league by 2015, and to qualify for both the U19 and U16 versions of the AFC championships.[10] which is now far from reality as India is 60th by FIFA World Rankings and 13th among the Asian countries and yet to qualify for AFC Women’s Asian Cup since 2003, FIFA Women’s World Cup and Olympic Games.
They participated in the qualifiers for the 2012 Olympics in March 2011. In their first match they beat rivals and group hosts Bangladesh 3–0. In the second round India Women played Uzbekistan where they tied the first match 1–1 but lost the second leg 1–5 and were officially knocked out. Again for Rio 2016 Olympics they participated in the AFC qualifiers, first match was a win defeating Sri Lanka with score 4–1 then shocking defeat from Myanmar with a score line 0–7 which led the way out from the qualifiers.
India participated for the second time at the Asian games in 2014, but the condition was not better than the previous participation, 16 years back in 1998. Though India defeated Maldives easily with 15–0 score, but a similar fate of Maldives was faced by them in the next two matches where they were defeated by both South Korea and Thailand with the same score of 0–10.
