A historic SAFF tournament final that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons

Everyone in the Bangladeshi sports fraternity is talking about the final of the U-19 SAFF Women's Championship between Bangladesh and India.

While the match ended 1-1 in normal time and then 11-11 on penalties, and then the drama and confusion happened over the coin toss with India winning there, I was there in the production room doing commentary, trying to make sense of what was happening. 

There was no way to find out what exactly happened as there was no one from the production end who could let me know.

Tensions were at an all-time high as the Bangladesh team management protested the decision to have the coin toss.

I spoke with the team's manager Amirul Islam after the incident and he said "The referees have to speak with both team's managers before making decisions like that (coin toss). The bylaws of this tournament have no coin tosses."

The initial information coming through from people involved in organising the event was that the match commissioner D. Silva Jayasooriya Dilan made the decision to have the toss later confirmed by the SAFF General Secretary Anwarul Haque Helal.

Initially, the referees were ready to continue with the penalty shootout once the score was 11-11 and Bangladesh's captain Afeida Khandaker was getting ready to take her 2nd spot kick of the shootout. 

During the coin toss, Afeida also seemed upset about something, perhaps not understanding the coin toss rules but later she told the media that she thought "the coin toss was to choose who would take penalties first as all 11 players had already taken penalties."

There were a few fans who threw bottles inside the stadium; one fan even threw a bottle which had urine in it but no stones were thrown as some Indian media outlets reported.

The Indian players then started to agitate the crowd by running towards them to celebrate and mock them. 

Things could have gotten very nasty at that point and had the crowd decided to enter the stadium at that point, there wouldn't have been enough police and security to protect the players.

Later on, more reinforcements were called as time passed and the Indian team then decided to exit the playing field and enter their dressing room. 

According to the rules here, the match should have counted as a forfeit if a team failed to return to the ground after 30 minutes had passed so Bangladesh could have been awarded the game, and they argued their case here.

At the same time, the Indian team argued that the match officials had already announced them as the winners. 

More than an hour had passed at that time and it was over 10 pm local time that's when information started to come from Bangladesh Football Federation officials that the president of India's football federation and Bangladesh's football federation were in discussion with the Indian High Commission in Bangladesh as they wanted the match to be replayed.

But as the Indian High Commission denied it, they decided on having joint winners, which is also not in the rule book.

So to try and fix one mistake by the officials, two more 'mistakes' had to be made to bring the tournament to an infamous conclusion. 

What I could see when the players were informed that there would be joint winners, was them celebrating and taking celebratory pictures. 

They waited a bit longer for the Indian team to come out but only their manager, captain and vice-captain came out to receive the trophy.

A lot of the fans had left but most of them remained to wait for a decision to be made and they left the ground happy in the end. 

What could have been a game discussing another late goal by Bangladesh's best player of the tournament, Shagorika - who scored four goals in as many games and two against India including the late winner in the group stage - and an epic penalty shootout, turned into a sour occasion due to officials messing up.