As India’s goal-scoring phenom Sunil Chhetri retires, the question is who will be the next No.9? | Football News
“It’s time our country got to see its next No. 9.” For years now, the Indian national football team has hoped that the next iteration of the striker who could lead the country, would somehow manifest himself and provide an answer to what life could look like after Sunil Chhetri.Now that the day of reckoning is June 6, even Chhetri himself couldn’t avoid the topic in his retirement video. The ever-gnawing, but ever-sidelined worry of ‘who next after Chhetri’. That the country has had to rely on the 39-year-old is an understatement. It is how much it has relied on Chhetri that paints a picture of what lies ahead. Look across some of India’s most important wins and draws over the last 19 years and the picture of Chhetri’s deep-rooted involvement in the goalscoring of the national team, starts to emerge. India has qualified for the AFC Asian Cup five times in their history. Three out of those five times have been with him at the centre of it all. Qualification for the 2011 Asian …