After surpassing the legendary Lionel Messi in terms of the number of goals at the international football level, Indian captain Sunil Chhetri believes that if we talk about this record after 10 years, then according to him, it will be more correct.
The 36-year-old Chhetri on Monday steered the Indian team to victory by scoring two goals against Bangladesh in the combined qualifying matches of the FIFA World Cup 2022 and AFC Asian Cup 2023. In this way, Chhetri’s total number of international goals increased to 74, which made him overtake Messi (72 international goals).
To this Chhetri said, “I don’t count the number of goals. After 10 years we will sit together and talk and count it.” On this achievement, Union Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju also praised him and wrote on Twitter, “Congratulations to @chetrisunil11 for overtaking Messi to become 2nd highest active international Goal-scorer! I enjoyed his brilliant 2 goals against Bangladesh which secured a win for India and put him on to 74 international goals.”
Sunil Chhetri has scored 74 international goals under his name and he has surpassed Argentina’s Lionel Messi (72) in terms of scoring the most goals for the country. Cristiano Ronaldo has 103 international goals. At the top is Iran’s Ali Dei (109).
On the Indian football team captain Sunil Chhetri’s brilliant performance, team coach Igor Stimac said after the match, “Last year many people asked me when Sunil Chhetri is going to retire? What will the Indian football team do after his retirement? The answer to this is that he is our best player. Sunil works very hard in every single practice session. He plays football as if a boy of 20 to 25 years is playing on the field. He scores goals in the same way.”
At the same time, Bangladesh coach Jamie Dey believed about Chhetri that if you give him a chance to score, he will never miss it. Jamie said, “We did well in the match for a long time. We had some chances but if you give Chhetri chances, he will score as he did. He got two chances in the last 20 minutes and grabbed them.”
