Last hurrah: Face of Indian football set to walk into sunset

Chhetri announces retirement, WC qualifier against Kuwait on June 6 to be his last game

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN

AS soon as the tweet dropped, you feared the worst. By the time the man in the video (9m 51s) had stopped talking, India's football fans were fighting back tears as they tried to accept a new reality. Sunil Chhetri, who had come to represent the only peak in a sport filled with troughs, was going to stop playing. "It's not that I was feeling tired, not that I was feeling this or that" he reflected in the video. "When the instinct came that this should be my last game, I thought about it a lot and eventually I came to this decision." The upcoming World Cup qualifier against Kuwait on June 6 would be his last game. After 19 years of wearing India Blue, it's goodbye.