Bangladesh coach Golam Rabbani Choton said that silly mistakes made by the defenders and the goalkeeper led to their 3-0 defeat against Nepal in their final Group B match of SAFF Women's Championship in Biratnagar yesterday.

“I said before that Nepal are ahead of us in every way and we needed to give more than 100 percent as well as avoid making silly mistakes to win the match, but the defenders and the goalkeeper made silly mistakes to concede all three goals,” Choton said at the post-match press conference at the Sahid Rangsala Stadium.

“There was a misunderstanding between goalkeeper Rupna [Chakma] and defender Masura [Parvin], who headed into her own net while Masura and Akhi [Khatun] made mistakes to concede the second and third goals even though Nepal could hardly cause the problems. We gifted them the goals,” explained Choton, who however admitted that marking did not work as Sheuli Azim failed to guard Sabitra Bhandari, who made the difference by scoring one and setting up another.

“Sabitra is the best striker in this region while captain Niru Thapa built up the game playing all around the ground,” Choton said, adding that her players could not implement his game plan.

Despite going down, Bangladesh held Nepal to a 1-1 draw in 2020 Olympic Qualifiers in Myanmar last November, but this time they could hardly produce any resistance against the same opposition, who had seen off Bangladesh from the semifinal stage of SAFF Women's Championship twice before.     

Defender Masura also admitted that mistakes from the defenders let the team down.

“We tried in our way to play well but we made a few mistakes which could have been avoided had the defenders talked to goalkeeper Rupna,” said a tearful Masura.

Nepal coach Hari Khadka said that their plan worked nicely.

“Our target was to score the first goal within 15 minutes and the plan worked very well even though the forwards squandered many scoring chances in the first half. The margin could have been bigger but Bangladeshi defenders played better in the second half to thwart a couple of good chances,” said Khadka.