And so it's done. Sunil Chhetri has played his last game in India blue, and it won't ever be the same again. But that's life, that's football, as an emotionally drained Gurpreet Singh Sandhu said after the 0-0 draw against Kuwait. "We won't have Sunil bhai with us," said Gurpreet, "it's sad, but we need to cope as a team and move on. Unfortunately, the world doesn't wait for anyone."
But how exactly does this team move on? That question brings us to the biggest dilemma Indian football has faced in two decades... Chhetri is gone, what now?
A switch to collective scoring
As of Friday, June 7, the top-scoring active Indian men's national team players are Manvir Singh and Lallianzuala Chhangte. They have scored seven goals each. It couldn't have been put in any starker terms: no more can India bank on the individual goal scoring volume of Chhetri.
The man who has 94 international goals had also got 49% of all goals India have scored in the last five years (2019-), the dependence on Chhetri higher than ever in the recent past. It'll be a drastic shift for the team's mindset now, but one that must be done. The goals have to be spread out.
There are avenues for that, of course. This team itself has four wingers who score (and create) regularly for their clubs in Lallianzuala Chhangte, Vikram Pratap Singh, Liston Colaco, and Manvir Singh. There's the option of Rahim Ali's physicality up top. In Brandon Fernandes and Sahal Abdul Samad they have two solid creators. Anirudh Thapa is a constant goal threat when allowed to play a little higher up the field, and is able to ghost in behind the lines. On the periphery of the squad, they have exciting talent with an eye for goal in Sivasakthi Narayan, Parthib Gogoi, David Lalhlansanga, Edmund Lalrindika, Gurkirat Singh and Kiyan Nassiri.
There are options, none with the pedigree of Chhetri (but then who does?) it is now up to the coach to find a way to organize the team so that the collective gets the best out of the individuals.
Stimac's coaching, or lack thereof
Playing two centre-forwards in central midfield, your best winger at left back and your best #10 on the right wing isn't one of those ways. Igor Stimac has oft-repeated the need for long training camps and more patience, but with both those available ahead of their Kuwait match (along with a healthy dose of goodwill), he failed to deliver. And his substitutions unbalanced the team and made them even more ineffectual. This speaks to both pre-match preparation and in-game management, the two tangible aspects of the coaching gig.
If the result hurt the team, it was the performance that deflated everyone else: with chances coming infrequently, no visible patterns or philosophy in sight. Apart from periods here and there - think the summer of 2023 -- Stimac hasn't convinced on either the chance creating front or the visible philosophy. And for a while now, his in-game management hasn't worked either. Before the Kuwait match, in fact, Stimac spoke about how he had got no impact from the bench.
India's longest serving head coach (in a single term), Stimac now has to take responsibility for all this. Stimac had earlier said that he would leave the team if they didn't qualify for the next round of FIFA World Cup qualifying, even though his contract runs till the next Asian Cup (2026). With India needing a positive result against Qatar to make the next round, that decision may come as soon as next week.
Stimac, or not, without the reliable source of goals that is Chhetri, it's up to the coach now to work up an alternative. Of course, the options are limited, and inconsistency is rife, but that's the job. In the short-term and the long-term, it's always going to be up to the coach to find a solution to the goal-scoring problem.
Whither the strikers?
Where are the other strikers, though? Stimac has often bemoaned the fact that no one apart from Chhetri plays up top regularly for their domestic clubs... but it isn't the job of the ISL and I-League club managers to address this issue. That lies on a table of two: the national team coach (as explained above) and the forwards themselves.
Chhetri himself has said this on many occasions, and more importantly, he's shown it across two decades - it's up to the players. And this is not necessarily just his position on the field. It's not about being #9, it's about scoring goals... and wherever Chhetri played on the pitch, managers always looked at him as the primary source of goals. That's a responsibility that can only be earned in a world as cut-throat as professional football.
And he had done it the hard way.
The initial impressions of Chhetri were all the same. As future father-in-law, first senior club coach and maidan legend Subrata Bhattacharya said, "At first sight, from the perspective of a tall defender like myself, his diminutive figure did not evoke any thoughts that he would be able to get on the goal."
But there was something that made him persist. "He showed an excellent reading of the game. He constantly made runs off the ball, barking at his teammates to pass the ball to him. He was just five-foot-seven, but whenever there was a set-piece, he'd stick himself right into the towering defenders. That really showed the most important thing a coach looks for in a player - hunger".
100% all-out-ness
It may sound simple, but the hunger Bhattacharya was referring to isn't as commonplace as you'd think. In fact, that hunger is what comes out as the greatest quality Chhetri possesses: his 100% all-out-ness.
Every single minute, Chhetri was switched on, and in sixth gear. Training? 100%. A game of table tennis? 100%. Diet? 100%. Interviews? 100%. Pushups on the morning of a vacation? 100%. It didn't matter what he had to do, he had to win, and that's a quality that comes only from within.
Whether you're a striker or a defender or a keeper, that constant desire to improve is the only way you can push both the individual and the collective to a place better than where they are at right now. For every member of the Indian team, that's the biggest lesson they could possibly take from spending time with Chhetri. Be all out, all the time, and you will become a better version of yourself.
For India, the standard has been set
It's simple, really. Every single time Chhetri wore India blue, he left it all on the pitch. This is regardless of domestic form, or of how he played on the particular day. It's a byproduct of that 100%-all-outness but it's something that's amplified when he plays for India. Sample this last game. He wasn't anywhere near his best, he was off the pace... but he never stopped running. All night long he made the runs off-the-ball, pressed high and defended from the front.
That standard has now been set, and any lowering of it is inexcusable.
And so you ask, what after Chhetri? It's up to the team now - the players, the coaches - to take inspiration from his legacy and not buckle under the weight of it.