Indian men’s football team captain Sunil Chhetri achieved another major milestone in his decorated career as he surpassed Brazilian legend Pele in the list of most international goalscorers. In the last group match of the SAFF Championship 2021 against Maldives, Chhetri not only made a brace to go ahead of Pele, but to move up to joint-sixth. Chhetri is now one place below Lionel Messi in the list. Chhetri now has 79 goals in 124 matches for India.
Chhetri is tied sixth with Zambia’s Godfrey Chitalu, who has scored 79 goals in 111 games. In this list, Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 115 goals in 182 matches. The second in the list is Ali Dei of Iran, who has 109 goals to his name. Mokhtar Dahari of Malaysia and Ferenc Puskas of Hungary/Spain are in third and fourth place respectively.
Before the Maldives match, Chhetri was on par with Pele, but owing to his two valuable goals, he went up the list and took India to the final of the tournament.
It was a frantic start to the match in front of a partisan crowd that showed their support for the home side. India captain Chhetri was alert to the opportunities, and started chasing down the Maldivian defenders from the start.
Suresh picked up a loose ball and, before being fouled outside the box, almost created an opportunity with pressure, as he won a tackle. The resulting free-kick, however, crashed into the Maldivian wall, and was soon cleared.
After the half-hour mark Yasir caught a dangerous position and passed it on the right, but it was cleared for a corner. Brandon’s resulting corner bounced inside the box before Kotal headed for Chhetri. The India captain attempted a back-volley, which was off target.
As the match neared half an hour, Chhetri again came close to scoring as he managed to get a powerful header from a Brandon free-kick. However, for the Blue Tigers, the header hit the cross-bar.
Chhetri had a serious crack in the goal near the hour mark when a string of runs between Chinglensana, Lalengmawia and Suresh ended with the Indian skipper losing the shot.
A few minutes later, it was Lalengmawia again, who played in a cross to Manveer. The lanky forward chested the ball en route to Chhetri, who blew it past the net, putting India back into the lead.
Chhetri gave India two goals in the 71st minute when another air ball from Lalengmawia was headed by the India captain. His header goes over Mohammad Faisal and gets caught in the net.
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