Tashkent, Oct 30: Indian women’s football team’s Paris Olympics dreams went up in smoke after it lost 1-3 to Vietnam in a group C match of the AFC qualifiers second round tournament in Tashkent on Sunday. Having lost their second consecutive match, India are now out of contention for the 2024 Olympics despite having a match in hand. In the first match, India lost 0-7 to former World Cup champions Japan.
The three group winners and the best-ranked runner-up team in the second round advance to the third and final round. Huyn Nhu (4th minute), Tran Thi Hai Linh (22nd) and Pham Hai Yen (73rd) found the target for Vietnam while Sandhiya Ranganathan pulled one back for India in the 80th minute.
All four goals of the match were scored from headers. Bala Devi, who has been the star striker for India throughout her career, was posted as a deep-lying midfielder by Thomas Dennerby, while Soumya Guguloth and Anju Tamang kept switching between the centre-forward and the right-wing positions.