Sunil Chhetri may be second most prolific international goalscorer among active players behind only Cristiano Ronaldo but the India captain has more modest aspirations for his country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The forward, who turned 35 on Saturday and has notched 71 goals in 111 internationals, only wants to get India into the top echelons of Asian football before he finally retires.\u201cI don\u2019t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry,\u201d Chhetri told Reuters in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhenever I do decide to hang (up) the boots or whenever I am forced to hang my boots, I just want that my country is in the first 10 and stays there.\u201cOne thing that I really, really want is that India believes, and we all at least aspire, to be in the first 10.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India\u2019s obsession with and success on the cricket pitch has left it a massive underachiever on the football field and the national side is 103rd in the FIFA rankings, 18th among Asian nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The path to where many believe India should be in the world rankings is long and hard but Chhetri believes the first step would be regular meetings with the likes of Japan, South Korea, Iran and Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we are in the first 10, you are giving yourself a realistic chance to play against the best in Asia and then you always have the answer to how much you have to achieve more,\u201d said Chhetri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunil Chhetri may be second most prolific international goalscorer among active players behind only Cristiano Ronaldo but the India captain has more modest aspirations for his country. The forward, who turned 35 on Saturday and has notched 71 goals in 111 internationals, only wants to get India into the top echelons of Asian football before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67518,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67516\/revisions\/67518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}