U-17 Women's Championship: Tigresses Win 2nd Straight Match to Make Final, Panthers Out

New Delhi: Priya PV's Tigresses outclassed the Panthers 5-2 in their second game of the U-17 Women's Championship to qualify for the final of the tournament, which will be held on Sunday.

The tournament, aimed at helping India select players for the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup India 2020, is being held in Kalyani, West Bengal in a round robin format after which the top 2 teams will contest in the summit clash.

Amisha Baxla shone once again for the Tigresses while Anju scored a brace to give the Tigresses a thumping win. Panthers, who have now lost their second straight game are out of contention for the final.

Despite the loss, the Panthers did finally open their account, albeit a bit too late, with Lalnunsiami (77') and L Rejiya (80') finding the back of the net.

Despite the qualification for the last four, the Tigresses will take on Lionesses on Sunday while Panthers will be up against Bembem Devi's Cheetahs on Friday.

Tigresses was clearly the better team as the Panthers frailty at the wings was exposed once again by another team. While the Lionesses had exploited the wings in the Panthers' first game with their speed, the Tigresses showed good passing skills and put in good crosses to find the spaces.

Amisha and Anju were livewires up front while Aveka Singh sat in the middle and found spaces excellently to help Tigresses dominate the proceedings.

In the 14th minute of the match, Amisha played a sensational through ball from the left for an onrushing Anju on the right. Anju collected the ball after it went pass all the three defenders in line, took a touch and chipped it over the keeper to put the Tigresses in the lead.

Just three minutes later, Nitu Linda scored off a beautiful curling strike from 30 yards out, even though the keeper had got her hands to the ball and ideally, should have tipped it over.

With the Tigresses dominating with the ball, the Panthers failed to get any sort of rhythm going their way and in the 27th minute, the Tigresses made their domination count once more.

Amisha put in a fabulous cross from the right to the far post and Anju was right there at the goalmouth to poke the ball home.

The story hardly changed in the second half as the Tigresses got their fourth in the 60th minute and this time was Amisha was the scorer. She received a stunning through pass from the back and ran with pace on the right and shot the ball in.

Six minutes later, Amisha became the provider once again as created all the space for Karen Estrocio to poke it home.

With the comfortable lead by five goals, the Tigresses worked around the ball well and tried to find opportunities to score more from time to time.

However, in the 77th minute, Panthers scored their first goal of the tournament when Rejiya took a beautiful turn and fed the ball to Lalnunsiamiw, who slotted it in.

Three minutes later, Rejiya turned the goalscorer as she made the best of a defensive error and took control of the ball to chip it over the keeper.

However, the two goals came in a little too late for the Panthers as Tigresses ran away as comfortable winners.

At 7.30PM, Lionesses and Cheetahs will take on each other. If the Lionesses win the match, they will join Tigresses in the final but if Cheetahs get the victory, then the final day of the round robin will not see dead rubbers.