2013 SAFF Championship final

India entered the 2013 SAFF Championship as the reigning champion after defeating Afghanistan in the 2011 SAFF Championship. Afghanistan's best record previous was runners-up in the 2011 SAFF Championship.[4]

To the final, India struggled through and scraped by the group stage through head-to-edge edging out Pakistan from an own-goal by Samar Ishaq in a 1–0 win to the Indians. Later in the semi-finals, against Maldives, it took India until the 86th minute when Arnab Mondal opened the scoring to leave it a 1–0 win to proceed to the final.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, breezed by both Sri Lanka and Bhutan in the group stage with comfortable wins and a 0-0 stalemate with Maldives. To proceed to the final, Afghanistan won convincingly in a 1–0 win against the hosts Nepal with the lone goal coming from Sandjar Ahmadi in the 11th minute.

India entered the tournament as favorites to win but as matches progressed, many thought otherwise. Afghanistan entered the final as clear favorites to win, before the match, due to their journey and having their highest FIFA ranking, at the time, of 139. India, however, barely scraped by to the final and had a FIFA ranking of 145.

Afghanistan		Round	India
Opponent	Result	Group stage	Opponent	Result
Bhutan	3–0	Match 1	Pakistan	1–0
Sri Lanka	3–1	Match 2	Bangladesh	1–1
Maldives	0–0	Match 3	Nepal	1–2
Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  Maldives 3 2 1 0 18 2 +16 7  Afghanistan 3 2 1 0 6 1 +5 7  Sri Lanka 3 1 0 2 6 15 −9 3  Bhutan 3 0 0 3 4 16 −12 0 Source: RSSSF		Final Standings	Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts    Nepal 3 2 1 0 5 2 +3 7  India 3 1 1 1 3 3 0 4  Pakistan 3 1 1 1 3 3 0 4  Bangladesh 3 0 1 2 2 5 −3 1 Source: RSSSF
Opponent	Result	Knockout stage	Opponent	Result
Nepal	1–0	Semi-finals	Maldives	1–0

During the tournament, Afghanistan had the most diverse squad. While most other nations had almost all players playing for their domestic league, Afghanistan had five players playing outside of Asia with four in Europe and the rest in either India's I-League or its domestic league the Afghan Premier League. The average age of the Lions of Khorasan was 26 years of age with goalkeeper Hamidullah Yosufzai the oldest at 31 and youngest being Sidiq Walizada at 21.

India had all its players playing in its domestic I-League with four players being free agents. The average age of the Blue Tigers was 26 years of age, as well, with goalkeeper Sandip Nandy the oldest at 38 and Sandesh Jhingan the youngest at 20.