Sabitra Bhandari ( ne, साबित्रा भण्डारी), popularly known as Samba, is a Nepali professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

who plays as a

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People * Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Sm ...

for the

Nepal women's national football team The Nepal women's national football team is controlled by the All Nepal Football Association and represents Nepal in women's international football competitions. The Women's Football Department is developed to control and manage the women's f ...

. She is the highest goal scorer in Nepali women's football with 45 goals.

Career

At club level, Bhandari plays for

APF Club Nepal A.P.F. Club (), commonly known as APF Club, is a sports club based in Kathmandu, Bagmati Province, Nepal. The club is the sports-wing of the Armed Police Force. History The APF Club was established on 24 October 2001, following the trad ...

. she became the best women striker of south Asia at the age of 20. In February 2017 she was invited to play the Maldives women's league.

Sethu FC

She joined

Indian Women's League The Indian Women's League, known as ''Hero Indian Women's League'' for sponsorship ties with Hero MotoCorp is the women's top tier professional football league in Indian football. Founded in 2016, currently a total of 18 teams from across the ...

side

Sethu FC Sethu F.C. is an Indian women's professional football club based in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, that competes in the Indian Women's League. They lifted the league trophy in 2018–19. Players Honours League *Indian Women's L ...

for the 2018-19 Indian Women's League season. In her debut match she scored 4 goals for the club against Manipur Police Sports Club on 6 May 2019. She also awarded with women of the match in her first match with

International career

Bhandari represents

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

at the international level. She participates and scores one goal against Bhutan at the

2014 SAFF Women's Championship The 2014 SAFF Women's Championship was an association football tournament for women's national teams organised by the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF). It was the third edition of the tournament since the first one in 2010. The competition w ...

. She represented the country during the

2016 South Asian Games The 2016 South Asian Games, officially the XII South Asian Games, is a major multi-sport event which took place from 5 February to 16 February 2016 in Guwahati and Shillong, India. A total of 2,672 athletes competed in 226 events over 22 sports ...

, she scored two goals against Sri Lanka. She scored the only goal in a friendly victory against

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

on 17 December 2016. Bhandari then played in Nepal's first match of the 2016 SAFF Women's Championship against

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous ...

. She scored six goals as Nepal won 8–0 to open the tournament and scored 5 goals against Maldives in the 2nd group match.

International goals

Honours

Sethu FC *

: 2018–19 Gokulam Kerala *

: 2019–20 Individual * Indian Women's League Top Scorer: 2019–20 *Top Goal Scorer of 2016 SAFF Women's Championship, *Best Player of Pradhansenapati International women's football tournament 2013, *Seventh National Game Of Nepal 2013 women's football top goal scorer, * 2019 Pulsar Sports Award woman's Player Of The year.

References