Man of the moments

Sunil Chhetri has retired from football, but he's not done yet. The 40-year-old legend talks about the moments that defined his careerand why his biggest achievement is off the field

- Christalle Fernandes

Captain Fantastic. Legend. India's top goal-scorer. Sunil Chhetri is known by many names. But perhaps his greatest achievement has been to shift the focus of a cricket-crazy country to football. Chhetri, 40, played professionally for 19 years. He was captain of the national team for 12 of them, from 2012 until 2024. Chhetri is also among history's top scorers, managing 94 international goals across 151 matches - an achievement that's only behind Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, Iran's Ali Daei, and Argentina's Lionel Messi.

So, when he announced his retirement in May, fans and athletes across disciplines mourned the end of an era. "Your impact on Indian sport can never be erased," javelin champ Neeraj Chopra commented on his Instagram post. Abhishek Bachchan simply commented, "CAP!" Nineteen years after his first match, he looks at the moments that shaped his life.

That first match: June 12, 2005

Chhetri says he must have been around four or five years old when he first started kicking a ball around a field, when his family lived in Kolkata in the 1980s. He was luckier than most; his father, KB Chhetri, played on the Indian Army's football team, his mother Sushila had been on Nepal's national football team. "Most kids my age weren't as fortunate to have professional football players, who'd play with them," he recalls."I grew up knowing the sport was in my blood."