Teammates congratulating Sunil Chhetri after scoring a goal
– Photo: Social Media
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The Indian football team played out a 1-1 draw against Kuwait in the SAFF Championship. India could not win the match due to an own goal by Anwar Ali. Anwar’s mistake proved costly as India got only one point as the match was drawn. Chhetri, however, backed defender Ali who scored the own goal, saying that it was the team that scored the goal, not the player alone. Since India’s semi-final berth was already decided, Chhetri was not too worried about the draw.
Talking to the media after the match, Chhetri was asked about Anwar’s own goal and said, “Anwar didn’t score this goal, it was scored by Team India. It can happen to anyone. We won the match.” Didn’t even talk about it after and we all are smart enough not to talk about it. I hope he ignores it and moves on. We all should support him because this can happen to anyone Sunil Chhetri also reflected on the ‘technical mistakes’ committed by the team during the match against Kuwait and said that players do not pay much attention to such mistakes.
Chhetri said, “Technical mistakes are something that we don’t take too seriously, we just work on our effort. Sometimes I miss silly goals that I shouldn’t have missed, it happens in football.” So technical foul is something that we don’t take very seriously. I am sure they will work on it. India has given the goal, Anwar has not.”
Chhetri said- even the fans present in the stadium cheered Anwar after the match, which helped him to move on from his mistake. To a large extent, we were able to do what was in our control. Kuwait are not an easy team, they can play in the best way and we have seen that, but most of the time we kept the energy going. I think we did well.