Sunil Chhetri 'Feels Old' after Leading India to 2-0 Win as Igor Stimac Criticises Other Attackers

Sunil Chhetri scored a brace as the Indian men’s football team defeated Cambodia 2-0 to grab all three points in their AFC Asian Cup qualifiers camping opener at the Vivekanand Yuba Bharati Krirangan Stadium on Wednesday.

Even though the ‘Blue Tigers’ looked comfortable in most parts of the game, head coach Igor Stimac pointed out at the post-match conference that a “fair result would be minimum 4-0”.

“We had at least four or five more good clear chances. So two more goals would serve really well,” he said.

Stimac said he demands more from the team and knows that there are areas in which they could improve and named his attackers, barring Chhetri, for missing chances.

“It’s again Sunil (who scored). Others are still trying but aren’t able to find the goals. I expect Liston (Colaco), Manvir (Singh), Udanta (Singh), and Ashique (Kuruniyan) to score. They all need to start scoring. I took Sunil out because this isn’t one game but three games and these boys need to learn to start playing without him.”

Indian talisman Sunil Chhetri though feels it is not him who scored the goals but the team as a whole.

“At the end of the day, the target is to qualify and it is one step at a time. Who scores is not important, a win is,” he said after the game.

Chhetri scored in the 9th and 60th minute to take his tally to 82 goals for the national team, who fifth on the list of the highest goalscorers, behind Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo (117), Iran’s Ali Daei (109), and Malaysia’s Mokhtar Dahari (89) and Argentina’s Lionel Messi (86).

When asked about the achievement, Chhetri said: “I just feel old. I genuinely don’t count these things.”

Chhetri echoed his coach’s words saying that he is happy with the team’s performance, but they need to improve on some aspects too.

“I am happy that we kept a clean sheet, that was important. A lot of things could have been better, this is not an excuse but we needed to maintain a better tempo during the game,” Chhetri said.

“A lot of players got 90 minutes, which is good. We have to play three games in the space of 6-7 days. It is always a happy feeling that you get all three points from the first game,” he added.

Stimac said that “one-third of the job is done”, with the result over Cambodia and that he is “confident about what’s coming up.”

India next face Afghanistan on June 11 and Hong Kong on June 14 and are trying to qualify for successive AFC Asia Cups for the first time ever, having done so in 2019, with their previous appearances coming in 2011, 1984 and 1964.