Before their game against Thailand, India’s final match of the AFC Women’s Asia Cup Qualifiers last week at the 700th Anniversary of Chiang Mai Stadium, they scribbled a message on a board in the dressing room. “Yes! You can do it”. Ninety minutes later, midfield spearhead Sangita Basfore says, they felt it needed some tweaking, maybe to make it read: “Yes, we did it”.
Ranked 70th and largely obscure, they had stunned 46th-placed Thailand to win the qualification group and book a spot in the 2026 AFC Women’s Asia Cup in Australia. Though the country has participated twice in the event—invited for the 2003 edition and were hosts in 2022, even though they withdrew due to Covid-19 outbreak in the camp–this is the first time they have progressed via the qualification system.
At the heart of the triumph was Sangita scoring a worldie to put her side in front in the 29th minute and add a scruffy second to restore India’s lead, which they then fiercely safeguarded. When the final whistle blew, coach Crispin Chhetri sank to the ground, something he says he rarely does. As did Sangita, uncontrollably shedding tears of joy. “All the hard work, all the heartbreaks, all the previous matches we couldn’t win, flashbacks of everything came all together. Finally we achieved it and we could come back home happy,” Sangita tells The Indian Express.
“I am a defensive midfielder,” the 28-year-old asserts. She loves that position as well, even though depositing the ball into the back of the net was the piece of action that drew her into the game, when she was a little girl at the academy run by her uncle and former Mohun Bagan player Bijay Basfore.
It’s a universal theme—most kids start playing football for the joy of scoring goals. “At the time I loved shooting the ball. Shooting practice was my favourite pastime and I would just play barefoot with boys during their practice. I would hide their ball sometimes and play with it. This should be around 2007,” she remembers.
Bijay’s seasoned eyes saw a spark in her, a gift for the game. Convincing her mother was difficult. But they coaxed her, and the mother gave her Rs 250 to buy boots and such stuff. She proudly says it was the last time she took money from her parents to play football. “Football gave me a lot and because of this sport, I managed to give my family financial stability,” says Sangita.
Injury, grief
This perspective kept her glued to the game during the tough years. In 2021, Sangita sustained an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. A nightmare of an injury for most footballers, especially for box-to-box midfielders, who bust their lungs and cover an incredible part of the real estate. She underwent surgery in October that year and started the arduous task of rehabilitation. She couldn’t touch a football for the next nine months. Worse, she had to foot the bill for the rehabilitation herself, from the salary she received from her job at the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).
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But the cruellest blow of all came shortly after she returned from surgery. “My father passed away shortly after I got back home after my surgery,” says Sangita.
“At the time I just couldn’t understand how to handle myself. My mother was alone at home. Even today to a certain extent I worry about her when she is alone at home because parents tend not to tell their kids what is in their mind,” she adds.
But she drew the energy to fight back from the game. “A lot was happening at the time but I stayed strong, stayed focussed that I needed to play again and so my mother would be fine. It is because of this sport that we were able to find financial stability at home, I have been able to give my mother, my sister and her kids a good life. So at no point did I ever consider quitting,” she says.
Turning point
Sangita had made her international debut in 2015 but says she could never really fit into the forward line. Maymol Rocky, the then national coach, told her that she has the capability to play further back. Sangita started browsing the videos of Toni Kroos and Casemiro, defensive midfield virtuosos of the time.
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“So I watched videos of how the likes of Casemiro and Toni Kroos would go about their job in that position. Even today I try to learn from them,” she says.
She seamlessly shifted to the new role and impressed coach Chhetri, who had little hesitation in installing her as the side’s beating heart in the qualifiers, along with her midfield partner Ratanbala Nongmaithem. “Sangita is the kind of player who makes others around her look better. Because she takes that much load. Players like Sangita and Ratan deserve those two goals because they sacrifice everything. The things Sangita has gone through, recovered through all that pain, got back in the national team, in the starting eleven. She deserved to score those two important goals,” said Chhetri. And take India and herself into a dreamland.
