Chhetri, the day before, on the days after: ‘I’ll get free tickets’

“Kuwait vs India in the second round, this is what we get [points at packed room]; imagine third round we play against Japan. Just imagine what it’s going to be like?”Sunil Chhetri

One look around the big press conference room in the bowels of the great Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata and you could see this was no ordinary PC. There was a mass of media assembled as India’s men’s national football team coach Igor Stimac and captain Sunil Chhetri walked in. India vs Kuwait is in itself a massive game, with great ramifications for the national team in the near future, but the main reason for the numbers was the fact that Thursday’s game would be Chhetri’s last in India blue.

There was a restless energy in the room after a long Kuwait PC, one that exponentially increased at the first sighting of Chhetri off-stage. It took a while to settle down, but once it did Chhetri held centre-stage with an ease we’ve seen for so many years. They’d all come for him — and just like he’d done on the pitch time and again — he delivered in some style.

Even more than usual, Chhetri was in rare form on Wednesday. The tone was set early on when he started laughing gently at the sight of a media officer attempting to carefully reposition the AFC match ball in the centre of the table (an AFC mandated fixture). He snatched the ball away, kept it to his side and said, still laughing, “I’ll remove it, don’t stress. It’s my last game [who’ll say anything?]”

Before he fielded any questions, he asked everyone not to ask him about this being his last game. “We’re here only, and only, to speak about Kuwait vs India,” he said. But the first question put to him? Take a wild guess… “Man, I’m trying really hard to not think about this game like this,” he said. “Inside I’m fighting this small battle, please do not go on asking me again and again ‘how you feeling?’, ‘how you feeling?’, ‘how you feeling?’. The only thing I want to address here is us vs Kuwait. Once we win this game, it gives us a great chance to go to the third round, which we have never done, so everything that we do is focused on fighting it out.”

The questions persisted, though. Surely the coach would miss Chhetri if India qualified to the next round? It was Chhetri who answered: “We win tomorrow, hopefully, and we are almost guaranteed to qualify – there are some permutations and combinations – but five games against the top teams in Asia home and away. At home, I’m going to come in tracksuits to watch the game, away I’m going to wear my suits.”

“Of course,” he added, “being me, I’ll get free tickets…”

The questions wouldn’t relent. If India win, would he reconsider? “No, sir,” he said with a semi-exasperated, semi-patient laugh. “I’m not somebody who says something that comes in my mind. I might look like that, but I think a lot. I’ve given [the decision to stop] a lot of thought. For 19 years it’s been a great ride, this is it.” But the fighter within couldn’t resist an additional jab. “I just don’t like the ‘if’ in your question,” he said. “So when we win tomorrow, no I will not [reconsider].”

But surely the captain’s decision had made the dressing room emotionally charged? Stimac answered in all earnest, talking about having a sports psychologist come along, about how emotions are good for fans but not for players, before Chhetri interjected. “If I may add,” he started, a mischievous smile hinting at a bit of cheekiness to follow, “It’s only you guys who are asking this question. We don’t talk about all this in the dressing room. We’re still the same, we’re having fun, everything is good. It’s just when you guys come in and ask ‘what do you think’ [repeats it 4 times] that they have to answer with something. Otherwise there’s no talk about the ‘last game’. We are done with it, when I joined the camp first day, I told the boys… and it’s done. So I think it’s just you [worrying], so you should probably blame yourselves.”

In between these questions there were others that he expanded more upon: advocating passionately for longer camps, talking about how the other no. 9s in the country offered different skills and threats for the coach to choose from depending on what was needed, speaking on the advantages of the “modern thing” of having specialists like psychologists. Yet despite his continued pleas, the questions on the ‘last game™’ kept flowing in.

Of course, Chhetri would have known this was going to be the case, and by now resigned to his fate, he sighed. “I’ve been here [for an India PC] many times, in front of you guys many a time… and I’m highly grateful. But it’s time, it’s the right time. This is one of the biggest games that I am going to play in. There couldn’t be a better game for me to call it my last. I am in peace from inside, I’ve given it whatever I’ve had.”

It’s then that he added something that highlighted just how much higher he placed the team than himself, how much more he cared about the success of the collective than any individual milestone. “Kuwait vs India in the second round, this is what we get [points at packed room], imagine third round we play against Japan. Just imagine what it’s going to be like?” The scorer of 37% of all of India’s goals over the past 19 years (49% over the last five), Chhetri knows perfectly well that India’s progress is heavily dependent on him, and that his decision means he won’t be around to taste it personally… but to him, that didn’t matter one jot.

“It’s not about me,” he said in response to another query about him scoring on debut and possibly in his farewell. “It wasn’t about me. It’ll never be about me. I would love to get a 1-0, and I don’t care if Gurpreet or Amrinder scores. I don’t think you understand how big it’s gonna be… it’s huge. Playing the third round… it doesn’t matter, anyone scores.”