Sunil Chhetri announced his retirement from the Indian national football team on Thursday. The Indian football legend said the match against Kuwait would be his final game in the national colours.
Sunil Chhetri announced the news in a video posted on his social media handles.
He said that the game against Kuwait, part of the FIFA World Cup qualifiers, would be his last. The match is scheduled to be played at the Salt Lake Stadium on June 6. India is currently second in Group A with four points, behind Qatar.
When I decided that this was going to be my last game, I told my family about it. Dad was normal. He was relieved, happy, everything. It was my wife, strangely. I told her. ‘You always used to bug me that there are too many games, there’s too much pressure. Now I am telling you that I’m not going to play for my country anymore after this game.’ Even they couldn’t tell me why there were tears. It’s not that I was feeling tired, not that I was feeling this or that. When the instinct came that this should be my last game, I thought about it a lot, eventually I came to this decision,” he said.
“Will I be sad after this? Of course! Do I feel sad sometimes everyday because of this? Yes!” Sunil Chhetri added in the video. “Do I feel like I’ll miss the train and there’s just 20 days of training? Yes. It took time because the kid inside me never wants to stop being given a chance to play for his country,” said Chhetri.
“I have practically lived the dream. Nothing comes close to playing for the country. So the kid kept fighting. But the mature inside knew that this was it. It wasn’t easy,” Sunil Chhetri said.
Sunil Chhetri retirement: ‘Happy Retirement Legend’ trends
Chhetri has been the face of Indian football for nearly a decade-and-a-half and his 94 international goals make him the third-highest active international goal scorer after Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
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