Sunil Chhetri is surely the greatest of all time in Indian football. His consistency at the age of 38 talks about many things in itself. The Man, The Myth, The Legend is scoring goals for fun even in the twilight of his career. In the ongoing SAFF Championship. he has already scored 5 goals in three matches including a hat trick against Pakistan. His goal tally has been extended to 92 as he is only 11 goals behind one of the greatest players to ever play football, Lionel Messi. During a press conference ahead of the Semi-Final against Lebanon, the Indian skipper shared his thoughts on his retirement plans.
“When I’ll see the markers I have set are not there, I’m done, I’ll be gone,” Sunil Chhetri shares his thoughts on retirement
“I have no idea when my last game for my country gonna be and I am being very honest. It is derived from the fact that I’ve never had long-term targets. I want to think about the next 10 days, the next match, next 10 days of training. It will come a day when I probably will not want to because of a lot of other things. I’ll be done but till that time I don’t think about it.” Indian Captain Sunil Chhetri said.
“Generally, there are a few parameters that I think about whether I am contributing to the team or not, whether I am sprinting with Udanta or not, whether I am going for headers with Sandesh or not, and whether I am able to score against Gurpreet or not in training. So all these markers tell me whether I am good enough for this team. The day I start seeing that it’s not there, I am done, I am gone,” he added.
“One is the fact that I love football and second, you don’t get the opportunity to play for the country. Only these two are left. Apart from that the fame, the money, and all are done. I’ve done that and that doesn’t impress me much. So these two three things which are very important to me are left, the day these things are not met for whatever reasons, I’m gone. Sadly, I can’t tell you whether it’s tomorrow, one year, or six months. So, the day the patrol is finished or the diesel or the electric whatever you want, I’m done,” Chhetri concluded.
“We need better players than Chhetri in the future”
The Indian captain also explains what kind of players they need in the future for further developments. When our SportzPoint journalist asked him “What your advise would be for the youngsters who want to be like Sunil Chhetri and Sandesh Jhingan,” he said that India needs better than Chhetri and Jhingan for the future.
“I think we need better than Chhetri and Jhingan. If we want to reach where we want then we definitely need better players than me and Sandesh. That should be the motive. Slowly and steadily if we produce another Chhetri and Sandesh, We’ll be stagnant. We have to keep upping our quality and tempo. So those two kids, they reach my level when they are fourteen and they can surpass me and Jhingan when they’re 18-20 because that will give us lots of good impetus for our national team,” Sunil Chhetri explained.
