Credit: X
Indian football captain Sunil Chhetri, who has the record of the most international appearances and goals scored for India, has recently announced his retirement from international football. On Thursday, May 16, Chhetri took to his official X handle and posted an emotional video message confirming that the FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifying match against Kuwait on June 6 will be his last international game.
Sunil Chhetri has played 150 matches for India across all competitions and scored 94 goals with a 0.63 goal-per-match ratio, which is better than the Portugal legend, Cristiano Ronaldo, who leads the all-time international goal scorers list with 128 goals in 206 matches. Chhetri is fourth on the list and the third active player with the most international goals, only behind Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
In the emotional video, Chhetri said, "The recollection of the last 19 years is a combination of duty, pressure, and immense joy. I never thought that these are the many games I would play for the country, good or bad but now I did but these last one and half two months I did. And this (the feeling) was very strange. I was probably going towards the decision that this game (against Kuwait) is going to be my last."
He added, "There is one day that I never forget and remember it quite often is the first time I played for my countryman, it was unbelievable. But the day before, morning of the day, Sukhi sir, my first national team coach, in the morning he came to me and he’s like, you’re going to start? I can’t tell you how I was feeling man. I took my jersey, I sprayed some perfume on it, I have no idea why. So that day, everything that happened, once he told me, from breakfast to lunch and to the game and to my first goal in my debut, to conceding late 80th minute, that day is probably that I will never forget and is one of the best days of my national team journey.
"When I did decide that this is going to be my last game, I told my family about it. Dad was normal. He was relieved, happy, everything. It was my wife, strangely, started crying. I told her. ‘You always used to bug me that there are too many games, there’s too much of pressure. Now I am telling you that I’m not going to play for my country anymore after this game.’ Even they couldn’t express to me why there were tears. It’s not that I was feeling tired, not that I was feeling this or that. When the instinct came that this should be my last game, I thought about it a lot, eventually, I came to this decision."
Watch the video here:
In the 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifying - AFC second round, the Blue Tigers led by Sunil Chhetri will host Kuwait at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan Stadium in Kolkata on June 6.
