After India’s FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Kuwait on Thursday, legendary Indian football player Sunil Chhetri announced his decision to retire from international sport. The match will be played at the Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata on June 6.
The retirement decision of the Indian captain was made public through a video shared on his social media accounts. Chhetri has participated in a total of 145 matches representing India, where he has managed to score 93 goals throughout his 20-year-long professional career.
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Watch Sunil Chhetri announcing his retirement
I’d like to say something… pic.twitter.com/xwXbDi95WV
— Sunil Chhetri (@chetrisunil11) May 16, 2024
“When I decided that this is 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, and eventually, I came to this decision.
“Will I be sad after this? Of course! Do I feel sad sometimes every day 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 wanted to stop being given a chance to play for his country.
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“I have practically lived the dream. Nothing comes close to playing for the country. So the kid kept fighting. But the mature inside knew it that this was it. It wasn’t easy,” Sunil Chhetri admitted before adding: “Every training that I do with the national team, I’m just going to enjoy it. I don’t feel that pressure. The game demands pressure. Against Kuwait, we need the three points to qualify for the third round. But strangely, I don’t feel the pressure.”
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