Sunil Chhetri scored a brace to help India beat Thailand 4-1. (Source: AFC Media)Indian football’s goal machine Sunil Chhetri struck a brace to help the country stunningly outplay Thailand 4-1 and record its first victory in the Asian Cup since 1964 on a historic night here Sunday. Playing in his second Asian Cup and 105th match, Chhetri scored in the 27th (penalty) and 46th minutes for his 66th and 67th goals to become the second highest international goal scorer among active players. With his two strikes, the 34-year-old Chhetri went past Argentine superstar Lionel Messi, who has so far scored 65 goals from 128 matches. But the Indian captain does not wish to dig into the records and speaking after the match said that he is focused on the team’s success.
Considering the bigger picture, this is a good but small start. But I’ll talk about just this game – it was bloody brilliant to be a part of the way my team went about things. And it’s even more special knowing we made a country happy, even if it is only for a day.🙏🙏
— Sunil Chhetri (@chetrisunil11) 6 January 2019
“I can think about my goals some ten years later. At the moment, we need to focus. The goals need to come and it just doesn’t matter who scores,” he said in the post-match interaction.
“You can see the jubilation and happiness whenever someone scores. I am so happy for the boys. Every one of them ran and defended for their lives,” he added.
“It’s a tough pool when we started thinking, we felt that all the others were more experienced and better than us. But the manner the boys fought, it shows a lot of character. I have said this before, we are a very difficult team to play against,” he further added.
“We may not be the most technical team but we will fight till the end, and that’s what the boys showed,” he maintained.
Despite the convincing victory, Chhetri was all praise for the passing abilities of the Thai team. “They were very good with the ball. We saw that in the first half. We knew that if we allowed them space they would just be passing around the whole park and we may not even touch the ball. So we stayed close. The goals came in the right times and it helped a lot.”
Speaking at the post-match press conference, head coach Stephen Constantine played down the emotions and said, “We try to win every match that we play in. We don’t go into a match expecting to win 4-1 or 5-1. However, we are not trying to get carried away with the emotion.”
“We still have two games left and we still need another two points to qualify from the group stages. After we have qualified, we can get a little bit excited but our primary job is still to qualify out of the group stages,” said Constantine
“It is a cliché as it is just another match for us. It is another win that we wanted and have got in the AFC Asian Cup. Tomorrow morning, we train again,” he added.
